Mothers of the world {R}

This is a text that I wrote and published already in December. I reworked it and republish it because it perfectly describes and represents my views.

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PREFACE

It happens quite often that in the early morning (4 AM to 6 AM) one of the cats is scratching on my bedroom door and wakes me up and after that I lie in my bed in a transitional state halfway between sleep and waking. As I'm lying there, my mind (the "central executive" in the frontal lobe) goes on a journey and constructs stories that are often extensive and very detailed. A psychologist would probably label this as "lucid dreams". The stories usually vanish from my consciously accessible memory after some hours though they sometimes come up again in situations and at times when I never would expect it.

A few days ago I wrote song lyrics with the title: "Mothers of the World", and since then my thoughts and dreams are evolving around the idea, that the demise of humans and the catastrophic breakdown of the ecosphere can only be avoided by a concerted effort of all mothers. 

Mothers are the most influential and revered persons. The closest relation is the relation between a mother and her child. The deepest love is the love between a mother and her child. We spend the first nine month of our life inside her and many years with her while she cares for us, nurses us, teaches us, advices us. We spend many happy moments sucking her nibbles, resting in her arms and sitting on her lap.

Mothers have influence, and that applies to human mothers as well as to mothers of other species. All my cat friends (except Sumo aka Indi) start kneading and purring when they sit on my lap. It reminds them of their time with the mother cat. Cindy also likes to nibble on the palm of my hand and she does that with great perseverance for many minutes. When she stops, she stands up, stretches herself while looking at me and finally lays down with a big sigh. She always seems to be very happy and content after this exercise.

All our cats are spayed, but Princess Min Ki had kitten when she still lived at the nearby farm. Shortly afterwards she moved to us and when it became clear, that she would stay, we brought her to the vet and she got fixed like our other cats. It seems though, that the experience of being a mother strongly shaped Min Ki's character and when Cindy and Wendy joined our family as tiny little kitten, she took care of them and taught them the tricks and trades of cat life. That was two years ago. Cindy and Wendy grew up and are beautiful cats now and they both developed very strong and distinct personalities. They are independent, but they still revere and adore their step mother Princess Min Ki.

A mother will try to educate her child in the best possible way, a mother will want to give her child a good start in life. But in a rapidly changing and increasingly complicated world a mother may not have a clear idea, what she has to teach her child in order to enable a happy life, secure the survival of the species, and avoid ecological destruction. And in addition to that uncertainty a mother may be in distress and destitute, and for that reasons not be able to provide the best possible care for her child.

On a side note: Why should a mother not be able to provide good care for her child? The answer: One billion children (every second child on this planet) live in poverty. That seems to be an enormous number and I wonder, if anybody can grasp, what "one billion" really means.

Of course, there are even larger numbers, numbers that exceed our imagination even further. For instance: The worlds total military spending for 2009 was estimated 1530 billion US$. 

I cannot address the issues of inequality, exploitation, and military spending right here. These issues are always in my mind and I will come back to them sooner or later. I also cannot take on the issue of overpopulation, because an adequate and thorough discussion of this delicate matter would take me far away from the initial theme. Only the following few points: I support any kind of contraception, I hate the idea of abortion and think, that adoption should be encouraged. I'm against fertility treatments. 

6.8 billion people are hard to feed!

Back to my original theme. The following text is a compilation of dreams that I had in the last days. As I will continue dreaming, other texts may follow.

For Melanie

MOTHERS OF THE WORLD

Mothers of the world, teach your children well. 

You can save the world, only you can do it.

What will you teach your child?

You will teach your little girl, that she is clever and able to reach any goal and fill every position. That together with her sisters she will break the evil brotherhood of greedy, immoral, ruthless, warmongering men. That she can outwit them and destroy their networks and their systems of repression and exploitation.

You will teach your little girl, that she has to learn skills and get the best education, so that she can start to work in various fields of science or in public services. And that she has to use the acquired knowledge to invent and develop sophisticated tools that make it possible to break the evil brotherhood of men.

You will teach your little girl that she shall focus on this goal and avoid distractions by the deluge of useless and meaningless information. That she has to ignore trends, fashions, not give in to peer pressure, avoid the brainwashing by TV and advertising and consume any kind of media selectively and in moderation.

You will teach your little girl that she doesn't need fancy gadgets and fashion clothing. That she shall not waste her precious time with superficial men, except when they either accept her leadership or are useful and helpful to advance her cause.

You will teach your daughter to spend her time wisely and never lose focus. 

You will not be the only mother who teaches her daughter in this way and there will be many other young girls who will grow up like her. They will be inspired by the same ideals, they will get a solid education, they will start to infiltrate businesses and institutions. They will howl with the wolves and appear to be compliant and complicit and they will nevertheless implant the seeds of change in the minds of their audience and secretly create tools and structures to prepare for the revolutionary change that will destroy the plutocratic system and end the reign of the oligarchs.

And your daughter, who is now a bright and confident young women will become a media expert or a journalist or an artist and she will use her training in psychology and neurology and her artistic talents to produce benign popular entertainment and news reports and artworks with embedded hidden patterns and subliminal messages. The patterns and messages will be based on new findings about linguistics, visual and audial perception, and they will implant themselves in the brains of the viewers and listeners and accumulate there. They will be lingering in the unconsciousness, waiting to be activated with a master password.

Your daughter will work in a pharmaceutical laboratory and will together with her sisters in mind develop new medical drugs that will influence neurotransmitters in more subtle and sophisticated ways than any existing medications. She will work on drugs that can reduce aggressions and increase feelings of empathy and caring. She also will secretly develop drugs that women all over the world can use to sedate their violent husbands and convert them to obedient servants and supporters of their feminist agenda.

Your daughter will work in a biology laboratory and secretly develop bacteria that will infect wales and dolphins and other endangered marine species all over the world. The bacteria will not harm the animals, but it will make their meat unsafe and dangerous for human consumption and the hunting of this animals will stop because nobody will take the risk and eat the meat.

She will develop other infectious agents that will cause epidemics in industrial animal factories, forcing all industrial producers of pork, cattle and poultry out of business and fomenting a change in the daily diet of people around the world as well as a change of agricultural policies. These changes will result in the reassignment of farmland to grow crops for direct human consumption and they will allow sweeping land reform programs and a shift to small scale farming.

She also will develop a fungus that can be easily spread as a powder and that will make ink unreadable and will cause documents to deteriorate and to turn into dust.

Your daughter will work as an engineer and develop sophisticated tools and energy efficient little machines that will allow small farmers to grow their crops with far less effort and to outperform their industrial competitors. And she will develop new types of sailing ships, trains, airships/dirigibles, and other means of transport that will replace cars and trucks.

She will work as a physicist and she will become an expert in quantum mechanics and discover new phenomena that will allow to change the molecular structure of materials with a combination of electromagnetic radiation of various wavelength. Together with her sisters she will invent a device that scans the surrounding area with beams of electromagnetic pulses and is able to detect and neutralize combustable or explosive substances. The device will be called "Explosion Disabler".

The powerful nations will be terrified by this invention and the governments will try to prevent proliferation even harder than they tried to prevent nuclear proliferation, but the knowledge will be spread by the secret network of sisters and many small nations will start producing Explosion Disablers in big numbers and will distribute them to activists and dissidents all over the world. The soldiers and policemen will pull the triggers and nothing will happen and the gunners will push the buttons in vain and the terrorists will not be able to explode their bombs. The armored carriers and tanks and caterpillar D9 bulldozers will stand still because the combustion engines will stop working when they are scanned by the Explosion Disabler. And the helicopter gunships will fall to the ground and the bombs and grenades and mortars will not explode.

Your daughter will work in computer sciences. She will program computer games, that in nuanced and imperceptible ways will change the attitudes and value systems of the players and in addition to that will infect the brains of the players with secret patterns similar to the ones that are created by her sisters and transported via news broadcasts and entertainment programs and artworks.

Your daughter will go on from there and find out the secret codes and passwords of this interconnected world and she will break all encryptions. And together with her sisters she will write the software, that will infect all the networks of the evil brotherhood of men. She will get access to the most powerful supercomputers either as an operator or an assistant or the spouse of an operator. Together with her sisters she will utilize the supercomputers to develop even more sophisticated and more capable software that can break any firewall and take over any network and completely reorganize the computers of the world. The supercomputers will also develop models and schemes that are able to replace the old systems, installed by the evil brotherhood of men, in just a few hours.

And then, one day the sisters will send out the master password across all channels and they will place it on all websites. The subconscious patterns that have accumulated in most brains will become active and people will suddenly realize that they were indoctrinated and misinformed. They will realize, that they were exploited and misused and that their lifestyle is distressing, unhealthy, unsatisfying, unsustainable, and immoral.

They will drop out of the rat race, they will leave the cities and join rural farm communes and small rural workshops. They will stop consuming and stop buying new gadgets and they will become self sufficient and self reliant. The soldiers and the low ranking members of the security apparatus will lay down their weapons and the assistants and henchmen, the lackeys and minions of the ruling class will declare their guilt, apologize, and join a general campaign of disobedience, leaving their masters alone, helpless and unprotected.

On the same day the sisters will activate their software and networks all over the world will break down or be taken over and the networks will be reorganized according to the schemes that the supercomputers secretly developed. The bankers and traders will stare at empty screens and the shares of the millionaires and billionaires will be gone and the loans will be void and houses will belong to the people who live in them and the factories and shops will belong to the workers.

The bankers and traders and the billionaires and millionaires will run to the shelves and search hastily and frantically for the documents, but when they find them the documents will be unreadable or turn to dust into their hands, because the sisters will have spread the special fungus that destroys paper and ink.

There will be no stock markets and no hedge funds and the commodity markets and central banks will be replaced by new distribution models that the supercomputers developed. The insurances and banks and all multinational corporations will become public services and will be instantly reshaped by the most powerful self adjusting and self organizing software from the supercomputers.

And the drone operators and gunners and the generals in their command centers will see the screens go black and the operators and gunners will fiddle with the controls and the generals will shout commands but it will have no effect at all because they will be disconnected and completely isolated.

And the predator drones and the jet fighters and the laser guided missiles will fall to the ground and never reach their targets.

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Mothers of the world

Mothers of the world

It's written on the tablet

That you will save the planet

Nobody else can do it

Mothers of the world

There's silence you have heard

There's darkness you have seen

And flickering lights between

There's love you have to give

There's trust you will receive

You teach it and you state your will

"Never wage war and never kill"

Whisper it softly in the ear

You teach your child, you make it clear

That life is precious, and it will

Never wage war and never kill

And if it now is unconcerned

It will remember what it learned

The promise it has to fulfill

To stop all wars and never kill

The slaughter never can be done

If it objects to take a weapon

Make sure, that your child never will

Take part in war or start to kill

If life is hard, it could get worse

And it could become hell on earth

Object, obstruct and call out loud

No nuclear bomb, no mushroom cloud

Avoid the pain, avoid the harm

Don't fight, just go home and disarm

There is no peace on earth until

Men stop to fight and stop to kill

This is, what you will teach your child

It will remember, that you smiled

And it will know your stated will

That it shall never ever kill

MATO  December 21 2010

Walking with the cats {4}

This is a text file that I created already in September, but it was so badly written that I shelved it. As I decided now to write more about my cats and less about the (increasingly awful) state of the world I cleared up and corrected the text and I hope, that it is acceptable in the present form. If not, skip it and ignore it.

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Another walk with the cats

At 6 PM Princess Min Ki urged me to make our daily walk. I put on my boots and went out, but before opening the garden door to cross the street into the wood, I hurried around the house to the terrace. As usual, Rosy and Sumo aka Indi were resting there on the garden chairs. "Min Ki and I go for a walk, "I told them. "Maybe you are interested to come with us." 

As I arrived at our gathering place across the street, Princess Min Ki was nowhere to see, but she came after a few seconds. Wendy was also there on her usual playground. She has set claim to a small territory east of the rainwater hole, she spends lot of time there. Wendy's flea/tick collar was loose and I tried to fix it but she jumped to the side when I approached her. She wanted to play but I'm not too good in playing catch and hide with a cat and therefore I refrained from chasing her.

Rosy appeared after another minute, and I wandered to the main path that is leading into the heart of the forest. The narrow footpath from the rainwater hole leads to a small crossing, where we can choose either to follow the main way to go in direction of the big clearing in the middle of the wood, or to divert right following a smaller path that leads to a tree nursery on the eastern border of the forest. 

If we divert right, we only seldom go the whole way to the tree nursery, most times we take the first diversion left, following a narrow path that leads into a dark and arcane part of the forest. The trees are about 4 to 6 meters high and stand very tight, this areas is not yet thinned out. The path is completely covered with moss and walking there feels like walking on a persian carpet. The path reaches after some 60 meters an area with young trees and it becomes suddenly bright (provided that the sun is shining). The surface of the path is still moss, but partly overgrown with grass. If we continue from there the way ultimately leads back to the big clearing.

Princess Min Ki and Rosy followed me to the crossing, but at the crossing they went not one of the ways that I described, but into the wood and also into different directions. I had that so many times before and over the years I have developed various responses and (unfortunately not fail-save) solutions to this kind of situation. Today I choose to go undeterred in direction of the tree nursery and at the mentioned diversion to the left I waited and called my little friends. I also called Wendy a few times.

After two minutes or so Princess Min Ki and Rosy slowly came my way, Wendy didn't show up, she for sure could still hear me, but obviously was not in the mood to participate in the walk. So we continued without her and entered this mysterious and arcane area of the forest. As we strolled along, progressing towards the brighter part, the cats suddenly looked disturbed. It was clear, that they were seeing something unusual. I looked around and to my surprise saw a roe dear standing between the trees. It was nearly invisible because we just were in the most dense and darkest spot.

The dear was completely quiet, standing like a statue. Normally the animals run away, when we are strolling through the wood and most times I see only their white backside, but this dear was standing still and was looking at us. It was slender and had long ears, and the ears were directed at me. "Hello", I said. "Don't be afraid. I'm not a hunter. But you should avoid humans. They are wicked and some of them have guns and want to kill you." The dear didn't follow my advice and kept still, looking at me. The cats were also completely still, they looked at the dear, and then at me, and then again at the dear. They were not quite sure, what was going on. After a few seconds I decided, that we should leave the dear alone and I walked on in direction of the clearing. As I looked back I saw the dear still standing on its place in the same posture, only the head had turned now and the eyes followed me. "Bye, bye," I said. "Nice to meet you. Take care…. Please take care, you are such a beautiful creature!"

We continued and when we were some 20 meters from the point, where this path merges into another path which then ascends to the big clearing, I heard a cat meowing. It was the very distinct voice of Cindy, and it came from the left side of the path. Cindy is normally in an area north of the clearing with very young and small trees, and dense, impenetrable underwood, but the part that we had reached now is somehow similar, the underwood is also nearly impassable. Not impassable for Cindy, because she knows the forest well and she can go into areas where no other cat, and for sure no humans, can go. I hollered: "Cindy, come, I am here." She meowed again a few times. It was obviously not so ease for her to crawl through the underwood towards our position.

I waited for a few seconds and suddenly Cindy emerged at a point, where I would have never expected any animal to come through. She jumped around me and rolled on the floor before me as she usual does, when we have found each other again and I kneeled down and stroke her and I whispered to her sweet little flatteries and compliments, as I always do.

I have to correct myself, "flattery" is not the right word, "adulation," would be more appropriate, because I really mean it, when I tell my cats, how great they are. When I say something nice to them, it is not flattering, I mean what I say, and they deserve it!

After Princess Min Ki and Rosy also had welcomed Cindy, we went up to the clearing and crossed it on a path that is only used by me and the cats. To the right of this path is Cindy's preferred hunting ground (I mentioned it already). This place is her kingdom and sometimes she cannot resist and simply disappears into the underwood, as we pass the area during our walks. Today she didn't disappear and came with us. This path merges at the northern edge of the clearing into the main way, which is descending from there to a part of the wood with big old trees and dense underbrush, and is leading finally to a small lake.

But we were following the main way only for some 30 meters till a point, where there are a few log piles on the left, covered with plastic sheets. The cats like to jump onto the log piles and look around and play hide and seek. From this place one can go/stumble/crawl through an area of middle aged pine trees where the underwood is not too dense and we did that so often, that a new path has formed.

When the cats had played a few minutes on the log piles and were ready to continue, we followed the small self-created path to finally arrive in the north-west area near the small road that separates this property from another wood. Very old and big trees, mainly spruce, grow here, there is only little underwood, it is easily passable and yet secluded (we never met anybody here.) 

This part of the forest is a long stripe, shaped like a crescent which is bending around the north-west and south-west of the wood and it leads ultimately into a little wilderness, a very messy and uncultivated part, that is situated in the south along the street where we live. When the cats reach this area, they know exactly that from here we usually go straight home. They are very disciplined then and follow me closely or sometimes go ahead. Though the remaining way till home is nearly half of the overall walking distance we usually need not more that 10 minutes to complete our round.

On the beginning of the wilderness part is a small area with newly planted trees and there are some puddles where the cats occasionally make a short rest to drink the rain water. This takes another two to four minutes, but never more.

We enter then a small path through the wilderness. The path was probably created by the children from the neighboring houses, who like to play there. Sometimes we meet the children and they are completely excited when they see me coming along with the cats. The cats usually disappear in the bushes when we meet other wanderers in the wood, but at this point they are so eager to go home, that they most times ignore the children and simply continue on their way. We go along this small path and reach the edge of the wood some 20 meters north of our house. The cats are carefully looking for cars and if there is nothing to see they jump out and we run the few meters on the road, I open the garden door, they rush in -- we are back again.

We have made it safely home!

BTW: Sumo aka Indi waited in the wood across the street and was seemingly disappointed, that she missed the train. But she and Wendy ran through the garden door together with the other cats, so they at least projected the appearance, that they had joined us. I later went out to Sumo and spent some time with her. She jumped onto my lap and purred and when I stood up, looking around in the garden, she followed me and watched as I plugged and ate the strawberries.

I also checked the garden pond. It is a bit cold in the night now and that means, algae are less of a problem. This year we have some frogs and I'm always glad when I see them and know that they are okay. At first I didn't hear or see any frogs but as I stood still for a minute there was suddenly something moving in the tangle of moss and grass that covers the banks. As I looked closely I discovered a tiny black frog. It was not more then three centimeters long. It must have emerged from a tadpole just now. I watched the tiny froglet hopping around. I hope the cats will not kill it. They already killed two frogs and when that happened I protected two sides of the pond with a 40 centimeter high chain-link fence. The wire fence doesn't look pretty but it is a temporary measure to keep the cats away and the frogs safe.

This is not a manifesto

One reader told me that I write so much and she has not the time to read long blog posts. Most of my texts have between one thousand and two thousand words, some have up to six thousand words. For readers, who are used to twitter messages with a limit of 140 roman characters, it is for sure challenging if not impossible to get through such long texts.

I will in future write short posts in between. Like this one:

Reportedly the visitors of this blog get differing impressions about the author (me). I'm considered to be:

An arrogant and presumptuous cynic.

A strange and dangerous alien monster.

A socialist, trotskyist, materialist, nihilist, atheist, pacifist (I'm all of that btw.)

A compassionate human being who feels empathy for fellow creatures and who tries to help.

For those who are in a hurry and don't have time to read older texts and who nevertheless want to make up their own mind, here are a few essential excerpts from old posts:

Every person shall live her or his life in the most efficient way using the least possible amount of energy and resources and causing the least possible harm to fellow creatures and to nature in general.

Everybody shall have the chance to develop her or his full potential and to contribute to the wellbeing of her or his fellow creatures.

We have to stop reproducing until the world population has stabilized at a sustainable level of around four billion.

(This is from my blog text You want to save the world?)

A few short recommendations for the hurried reader:

If your are brave:

Tell the truth, be a whistleblower. Lift the veil, reveal, expose.

Be careful, remain anonymous, don't tell even your best friend. You don't want to end like Bradley?

And if you are even more brave:

Block, hinder, obstruct, sabotage.

Study computer science, mathematics, programming. Reverse engineer Stuxnet.

Now the hard part:

Stop watching TV, stop viewing any products of corporate media and the Hollywood dream machine.

Avoid or at least ignore advertising. Use add-blockers.

Don't multitask.

And the very hard part:

Stop buying, stop shopping, stop consuming.

Slow down! Drop out of the rat race, live at your own pace.

Don't use credit cards, avoid banks, insurances and other financial institutions.

Use public services and non profit organizations, shun corporate businesses.

Even better: Join or create small networks to make the big networks irrelevant and become independent, self-reliant, self-sufficient.

If you are able to apply the proposed lifestyle changes, use the gained time for meditation and for acquiring skills.

Become a dissident, become a teacher, become a prophet!

Don't forget: Life is a journey without return and every day that is gone, is gone forever.

Spend your days wisely!

====================

The Hurried Reader

Why have you come here,
reader?
You have torn
this book open
and you dig frantically in its pages
searching for
who knows what treasure
hidden in the sand
Do you want to cry
or to laugh
Do you have no one else
to talk to
Is your life
that empty?
Then close this book quickly
Keep it away from the alarm clock
and the medicine cabinet
Let it ripen
in the sunlight of desire
on the branch of beautiful silence

found on http://doublechange.org

Cindy, come home!

I just made the obligatory walk in the forest with my cats. It is wet and the temperature is moderate. The first plants are growing, spring starts and I will be outside more often in the next weeks and spend the time with garden work.

The recent walks were well attended. Wendy takes part again (I think I told that already in my post Walking with the cats {3}) and three days ago even Sumo aka Indi came with us. Sumo is very attached to me and every time I come into the kitchen or go to the living room, where she mainly resides, she goes up and meows at me and tells me that I shall spend some time with her -- what I of course do. When it is time for a walk and I cross the road and go the few steps to our gathering place between the trees from where we always start our strolls, Sumo follows me and also comes to the wood but she keeps distance and only tags along the first hundred meters.

Sumo is still afraid of the other cats, though none of them ever harmed her. Sumo is an old lady and she prefers to be left alone and not be bothered by the other members of the cat family. The walk three days ago was the first event, where Sumo came with us and made a complete round. She always stayed some 20 meters behind and I had to wait for her at every turn, but she completed the walk and I hope that it will not be her last attendance.

The cats were surprisingly disciplined today. Cindy was always beside me and so I walked at a faster pace and choose a longer route and the cats were very exited because we went to an area where we have not been for a long time. At one point I thought we had lost Cindy, but she suddenly reappeared in front of us and I realized that she had bypassed the group by using a hidden sideway that only she knows. Cindy is at home here, she knows the most secret places and hideouts, she knows the forest like no other cat.

Cindy is a wild cat, she has long legs and she looks a bit like a lynx. Maybe there was some interbreeding a few generations ago, I don't want to rule out, that she has inherited Lynx genes.

She is always active and does everything with lightning speed. She climbs up, rather runs up the trees till the top at the same speed other cats run on a plain field and because of that she unfortunately is a dangerous predator who catches animals that normally would be safe from cats. I'm sad to say that she already brought a squirrel as a present into the kitchen. I don't count the mice and voles and birds anymore, that we regularly get presented from her.

As I said before, Cindy knows the forest like no other cat. This is her territory, this is her kingdom. In summer she often spends a whole day or two in the forest and just when my wife Herta and I are getting worried (I mean, really worried) she rushes in and jumps around franticly meowing and looks at the food cups and at me, making clear that she is hungry and wants food right now.

Occasionally Cindy stays away even for a longer period of time. I remember one incident last summer when I started looking for her after she was gone for five days. I walked through the forest for many hours, calling her name all the time. I took the familiar ways and the more obscure ways, I crisscrossed the forest from north to south and from east to west. Cindy didn't show up.

I was very desperate. Hunters are not frequenting this part of the forest but they are in the neighboring areas and Cindy has a very wide territorial range. Had she been shot by a hunter? Or encountered a fox and lost the fight? Or had she eaten poisoned bait or been caught in a trap?

While I walked around in search of her, I was imagining how it would be if she would suddenly appear and run to me and leap at me and how I would take her and hold her in my arms. I imagined, how she would role on the floor in front of me as she always does and how I would pet her and rub her belly and she would stretch her legs and purr and nibble at my hand a little bit and maybe turn around and start kneading.

Cindy didn't show up and after about four hours I was exhausted and discouraged and quit sure that I had lost my friend forever -- I felt miserable and forlorn, and was fighting the tears. Wandering aimlessly around for a while I came rather by chance to the big clearing in the middle of the forest and to the point where a big colony of young trees are growing. The trees, mainly conifers, are not higher than one meter and a half. The ground is littered with branches and splinters from fallen trees and the underbrush is very dense and nearly impassable. This was Cindy's favorite spot. Here she could hide and nobody could follow her. Nobody except her could penetrate this little jungle.

I stood still and listened to the wind and I called Cindy's name. I had called her name so many times before, I didn't expect to reach her, I think I called just to commemorate her. I waited for a while and listened to the wind and then I called her name a second time. If I remember it right I didn't call out loud, I rather spoke her name.

And as I listened to the wind and the twiddling of the birds, I heard something that resembled a faint meowing. I called again and the meowing became louder. It sounded now like Cindy's voice and it sounded a bit distressed and as she was meowing again and again it became clear to me that she had a hard time working her way through the dense jungle towards my position. "Cindy, come" I said, "Cindy, I'm here, please come. I need you!".

It did take another 30 seconds or so till Cindy crawled out of the underwood, completely covered with needles and leaves and with all kinds of seeds from the bushes sticking in her fur. I had passed this place once before on my search but she probably could not come out fast enough then or she maybe was too far away to be heard by me or maybe she just meowed at the same moment as I was calling her name.

"Cindy, my baby, my little love" I said, tears running down my cheeks. She leaped at me and I took her in my arms and held her like a little baby. And I let her down to the ground and she rolled on the floor in front of me as always and I petted her and rubbed her belly and she stretched her legs and purred and nibbled at my hand a little bit.

It was exactly like I had imagined it. It was like I had thought the moments of our reunion could be. The pictures that I had in my mind while I was running through the wood in search of her had become reality.

It happens not too often, that our dreams and wishes come true in exactly the same way as we imagine them. As far as I know this is a rare occurrence in everyones life and I celebrated this special moment with my little friend appropriately. I was sitting with her for 20 minutes and talked with her and played with her and we had a really good time. After we had told each other everything, the more trivial notions as well as the precious secrets, and after we had done all the things that we had postponed for so long because there was never enough time, we went home together.

Herta was very relieved when we arrived home, she had worried about the cat but also had started worrying about me, because I had been away for more than five hours. Cindy got the best food that I had at home and the other cats of course got also a portion of this special food so that nobody could complain about being shortchanged.

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This morning Cindy scratched again on the door of my sleeping room and I let her in and she laid down on the blanket looking at me and purring. It was much too early for me to go up and I wanted to sleep again but I nevertheless put my hand on her little body and whispered a few sweet words to her. 

Cindy and I don't have many common interests, She is not interested in politics and science and also not much in music. I already wrote in my blog post Cindy, the piano cat, that her interests are rather in the field of outdoor activities like catching mice in the adjacent forest, climbing to the top of the highest trees and racing at top speed through the various pathways of the forest.

But there is one interest that we share, and it is an eminent one: We both want to have a good and easy life, we both want to live as long as possible and we try to avoid pain and suffering. In the spirit of this common goal we stand together and do the best to weather the storms together and to come around the adversities of life. There is no doubt about it, we will never part ways and we will support each other as good as we can till the end of our lives.

As I thought about this and other things and various memories of the adventures that we had together until now went through my mind, Cindy turned on her back and I had to caress her belly and she stretched and put her legs upwards. She was the embodiment of coziness and languorousness. After a while she turned to the side and pressed her little head against my cheek. She did it like Lizzy had done it.

As she laid so close to me, I heard her breath. Cats usually breath much faster than humans, up to two times as fast. But Cindy's breathing was rather slow and steady, projecting a feeling of calm and peace. I continued to listen to her and I asked myself if she in return would listen to my breath? She was for sure listening because when I interrupted my breathing with a long soft sigh, she also softly sighed.

We were laying there for some time, enjoying these precious moments of serenity and quiet bliss.

Cats are such erotic creatures. Unfortunately my little cat girls are much, much too small. They are the completely wrong species for anything that would be an equivalent or in some strange way remotely resemble intercourse. This is really sad and a serious deficiency in an otherwise perfect relationship, and there is no solution to this problem. If my lovely cats would be big enough, they would most probably rather like to have me as dinner than to have sex with me. I'm aware of the danger and I know, that I shouldn't try to seduce lady tiger.

In anyway, I'm married and therefore better should bury such naughty thoughts in the lowest and deepest drawer of my consciousness. And you should not read it! And if you read it, you should forget it!

Or laugh about it.

=================

When I started this text, the first version of the first paragraph was:

I just made the obligatory walk in the forest with my cats. It is wet and the temperature is moderate. The first plants are growing, spring starts in a few days and we will be outside more often in the next weeks and not be idle and lazy and radiopassive anymore.

I read the two sentences again and again and though: NO, I cannot write this!

I'm still alternating between hope, relieve, fear, despair. The real story will only come out later, maybe years later. I decided not to buy potassium iodine pills, they could do more harm than good, but I will reduce or even completely abandon cheese (which is the only dairy product that I still eat). It is probably not a bad idea to become a vegan (my son is a vegan, so I should also be able to live with this diet).

Whatever the outcome of the nuclear crisis in Japan may be, we have to use this event to implement some reason into the public discussion. This is what I wrote in my blog post You want to save the world?

POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants), heavy metals (arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead), and the pollution of air, water, food with various other man induced substances could cause an epidemic of cancer.

Industrial produced food (especially GM food), EMF radiation from cell phones and computers, and an unhealthy lifestyle with too less exercise and too much sensory stressors (constant noise, constant distraction by phones and computers) could cause a general decline of health.

The overuse of antibiotics in factory farming and in healthcare could cause an increase of fatal drug-resistant infections. Complete hospital wards could have to be quarantined and sealed off completely to prevent the further spread of "superbugs", with corpses left rotting in the hospital beds.

The continuing spread of HIV and other STDs and the danger that these infections become an uncontrollable epidemic is vastly underestimated. HIV and other STDs could become a health concern for the general population (search the Wikileaks archives for "Steve Jobs").

And if developments of this kind are not enough to raise eyebrows and make people feel uncomfortable:

Birth defects could increase dramatically. The already mentioned epidemic of cancer could become more severe and reduce life expectancy to 60 years and below. A worldwide ebola epidemic could kill two billion people or more.

Don't forget the nuclear option: A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan could settle the Kashmir conflict once and for all and kill a few hundred millions.

When catastrophes of such unimaginable proportions will become reality, far more individuals than the few unwavering souls that I mentioned will think about alternative ways!

I didn't mention the possibility of a nuclear meltdown of power plants, I was not aware that this could become an existential threat to mankind. Maybe there are other dangers that we are facing and that I just cannot imagine right now? Who knows what else is in the cards?

Oscar Wilde once remarked, “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” Well, I'm bracing for the next unexpected catastrophes.

I'm also bracing for the unexpected solutions, for new ideas and unexpected opportunities to avoid predicted catastrophes. Why should unexpected events always have negative implications?

New business opportunities

We live in exiting times and we live in a constant changing environment. This means that new business opportunities emerge every day for the truly creative and innovative entrepreneur who is on top of the game and who is able to take the chances as they come. Things are changing at an increasingly fast pace and only the ones who are alert and always on guard will succeed, the procrastinators will lose out.

In the wake of the latest news we present the following proposals for new business ventures:

Creating a "certified low radioactivity" brand of food to be sold in supermarkets right beside the organic food.

New advertising campaigns for double-fortified (iodized) salt. Also breads and crackers, desserts and snacks, cheeses and many other kinds of manufactured food will benefit from advertising its high amount of iodized salt.

Offering new car models with special lead shielding.

Offering new lines of garments with incorporated radiation shielding. Lead aprons and lead gloves are already available but until now not widely used and only available in special shops.

Offering special "Low Radioactivity" menus and  "High Iodine" menus in restaurants.

Setting up factories in Antarctica or at alpine glaciers to harvest radioactivity free water for food and drink manufacturers.

Creating new varieties of bottled water from "1000 year old glacier ice" or "Antarctica ice".

Geiger counters are sold out in most countries and it is for sure a good move to increase production and also develop new models. For instance a "Volks-Geiger counter" which does not have all the bells and whistles of advanced models but nevertheless allows accurate measurements, that show which food is safe to eat and when it is appropriate to leave the house. Such a Volk-Geiger counter could be sold in big numbers at a reasonable price.

Offering Geiger kits for electronic hobbyists in stores like RadioShack or Maplin Electronics.

Developing and selling Geiger counter add-ons for iPods, iPads, and iPhones, special edition cell phones with integrated Geiger counters, and USB-Geiger counters for universal use with laptops.

Selling weather stations which include a Geiger counter in addition to thermometer, barometer and hygrometer.

Offering decontamination toolsets in hardware stores.

Founding specialized companies for refurbishing and decontaminating.

Founding educational institutions which offer training for "certified decontamination experts" and courses for "Low Radioactivity Live Style" counselors.

Launching a new weekly "Nuclear Times" in both online and print editions.

Launching a "Weather and Radioactivity Channel".

Launching a new entertainment company under the motto: "Better Radioactive Than Radiopassive".

Or alternatively: "Carefree, Scare-free Radioactivity".

Offering online courses and tutorials:

How to choose and cook low radioactive food

The low fallout tourist

How to use a Geiger counter

Coping with thyroid cancer, bone cancer and leukemia

Writing self help books with the following tittles:

Living with Radioactivity for Dummies

How to Live Carefree with Radioactivity

All About Radioactivity in 30 Minutes

Low Radioactive Diet

The Low Radioactivity Cook Book

Thyroid Cancer for Dummies

Pro-active, not Radioactive

Geiger-Counters for Dummies

Build Your Own Geiger Counter

Home Improvement and Decontamination

The Decontamination Primer

Radioactive - So What?

Carefree (Radio)activity

Upddate:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/business/22geiger.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

Heroes and Villains

The Japanese nuclear disaster will be worse than Chernobyl -- even the experts of IAEA and France's ASN acknowledge this now. We don't know yet how much worse. Will three or more reactors melt and explode and spill their radioactive content into the biosphere? Will the spent fuel rods burn and explode?

Every reactor core contains about 1000 times the radioactivity of a Hiroshima bomb, the fuel rod storages even more.

Glad to be a vegetarian (I couldn't eat my beloved cats or my other animal friends in anyway). http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

With the prospect of a significant increased level of background radiation all over the world there will be now an additional incentive to abstain from eating meat and avoid the accumulation of pollutants in the food chain.

This could be a chance for fish stocks and for many endangered species to recover -- unfortunately they too will be adversely affected by the increased radioactivity.

Who are the heroes and who are the villains in this tragedy?

The heroes are the 50 workers (actually 300, that are rotated in and out) that remained on the Fukushima Daiichi plant and are battling the fires and try to keep the pumps working and cooling water flowing. Sooner or later they all will die from radiation exposure or from radiation caused illnesses.

We don't know yet, if they will be able, to avoid a catastrophic discharge and spill of the radioactive inventory of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Regardless of the success of their efforts, they give their life for their fellow human beings and they should be regarded as saints and their families should get any necessary help and a special status.

The latest news is, that the Japanese government suspended operations at the facility due to a surge in radiation. This temporarily halted the desperate attempts of the workers to contain the disaster. Japanese government spokesman Yukio Edano told, that radiation levels had spiked to 1,000 millisieverts -- 1,000 times the level to which people can safely be exposed in one year -- but had decreased to 600 - 800, “So the workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now,”

Were are the robots? The Japanese are at the forefront of robotic process automation and robotic design. There are robotic welding machines, robotic lawn mowers and vacuum cleaners, there are even robotic pets. The Americans have unmanned aerial vehicles (MQ-1 Predator drones) and battlefield robots. But nobody cared about developing robots or remote controlled vehicles for emergencies. Robots and vehicles who could work now in the contaminated areas instead of the emergency crews who are sacrificing their lives!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The villains are the politicians and their advisers who made the decision to build the plants, the scientists and engineers who designed them, the GEOs and high level managers of the corporations who built and operated them and all the propagandists and pundits and other minions carrying the water for the nuclear industry.

Name and shame them!

I don't have the time to collect all the thousand of names and organizations who tirelessly worked to misinform and brainwash the public and who advised ignorant, corrupt, crooked, and nefarious political leaders. Maybe somebody starts a database now and puts it on the web -- please help!

Just a few examples, what could be included in this database:

General Electric designed the reactors in Fukushima.

http://www.ge.com/

http://www.gereports.com/facts-on-the-nuclear-energy-situation-in-japan/

TEPCO owns the plant.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/index-e.html

During a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu reiterated the Obama administration's support for nuclear power and said, that the USA. will learn from Japan's experience.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/15/nuclear.lobby/

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/CommentAnalysis/CorporateWatch/NuclearIndustry.aspx

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51367.html

http://nuclear-news.net/2010/07/20/nuclear-lobby-has-spent-953-million-to-promote-its-wares/

http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/nuclear-energy-lobbying-push/story/nuclear-energy-working-hard-win-support/

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/03/push-for-nuclear-safety.html

Alex Flint, Skip Bowman, Marvin S. Fertel, Mitchell Singer (NEI)

Tony Pietrangelo

Gordon Barnes (Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth)

Marshall Cohen

David Frum

Geraldine Ferraro

John H. Sununu

Christine Whitman

Patrick Moore

James Lovelock

David King (british scientist)

Potomac Communications Group

Robert Klindworth (Clean Energy America ) 

Chris Healey of Vancouver-based Titan Uranium Inc.

Gerald Grandey CEO of Cameco.

Rep. Joe Pitts

US President Barack Hussain Obama

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A very personal note:

I often wrote in my blog that this will end badly, but I didn't expect it to end so bad so fast! I always thought I could spend the remaining years of my life in modest comfort, shielding myself against environmental pollution with an intelligent choice of food, and retreating to an area where nature is still mostly intact.

You can call me egocentric and self-absorbed, Be assured that I grieve with the Japanese people who will have to bear the brunt of this catastrophe and who will have to bury their dreams and face a terrible reality. I also pity the Haitians who are neglected and forgotten, and the one billion starving people on this planet. I feel sorry for the slaughtered protesters in Libya and Bahrein and Ivory coast and I feel sorry for all the suppressed and exploited people around the world. I feel their pain, it makes my head spin, it is nearly unbearable.

I also feel for the fishermen, who worked to clean up the BP oil spill and are now suffering from severe illnesses caused by the toxic mix of oil and dispersants, and I feel for all the other millions of victims of environmental pollution.

And I moan about the myriads of innocent animals, who are poisoned by man made pollutants or lost their habitat and who are dying painfully.

I often wrote in my blog that this will end badly, because I worried about the children, they were the reason that I voiced my apocalyptic predictions -- I wanted to warn them!

My pregnant wife and I went from door to door distributing leaflets and discussing the perils of nuclear energy with anybody who was ready to listen. It was 1978 and the Austrian government had called a referendum about the nearly finished nuclear power plant Zwentendorf. We were part of a small core of determined anti nuclear activists, who took on a powerful coalition of industry and unions and ignorant politicians (Bruno Kreisky. Anton Benya)

And we won! The nuclear power plant Zwentendorf had to be converted into a small gas powered plant, the nuclear part had to be scrapped.

It was the start of a long career as an environmental activist. I founded an environmental organization and was instrumental in preventing an aluminum smelter and a hazardous waste facility and for six years I was editor of an environmental magazine. 

I thought that I had paid my dues and I could leave it to the next generation to keep the flame burning and keep fighting.

My son shares most of my values and views and he has dropped out of the rat race. He has opted out of cut throat capitalism, he doesn't take part in the "destroy your competitor" reality show. But he didn't join the fight, he is convinced that we are doomed and any resistance is futile and useless. Could he be right?

Shall we keep fighting till the end or shall we concede?

I'm exhausted and tired and weary.

I'm aware that I'm whining, and that these statements will appear as gloomy and discomforting to every reader, but that is how I feel right now. I feel depressed, hopeless, dispirited, weak. I will spend more time with my family and less time writing blog posts. I will enjoy this wonderful spring…

And if you want to help: Please tell me something nice! Please… We can still make a difference giving love and comfort to each other! 

I'm just not in the position right now to write something that projects love and comfort… Maybe later...

Maybe in future I'll write more about my cats. They are lovely, they feel fine, they enjoy the spring, they don't worry about higher levels of background radiation.

Wendy just got a tick collar (now that start again). I have to go with all of them to the vet soon for the annual vaccinations. And they need their worm pills! If I live long enough to accompany them and guide them till the last day of their life it would be okay. And then die with my beloved wife on my bedside holding my hand…

Well, we have to adjust our plans as we go, and make the best out of what we have got.

Make the best out of what we have got left.