What New Year?

[furtherfield.org]

What New Year?

As we all settle down to getting on with our everyday activities after the
Christmas event and the New Year. What have we learnt or realized  about the
past few years, in relation to realism of the dates given to us as markers,
signifiers of great changes in relation to humanities¹ many invented and
accounted histories? Nothing has changed.

There was a disconcerting feeling that celebrations at the end of the
traumatic 2001 was a damp whimper in comparison to the almost feverish, over
promoted Millennium. Many celebrated the Millennium within their communities
yet knowing at the same time that it was a social construct. For instance,
the year 2000 was not an Islamic Millennium, yet many Muslim countries still
used the Christian calendar devised by Pope Gregory the Great.

Many peoples including Iranians, Kurds and some Afghanis, mark New Year's on
the spring equinox, usually March 20 or 21. Americans once marked New Year's
in March, too. Britain, and American colonists, did not adopt the Gregorian
calendar until 1752, or 170 years after the calendar was reformed at Pope
Gregory's order. Gregory's calendar was one of many attempts to deal with
the problem of the earth revolving around the sun in a cycle of 365.24199
days. Leap years, invented millennia earlier by the Egyptians, helped solve
the problem, but they threatened to put the calendar year ahead of the solar
year. Gregory's calendar dropped future leap years at the turn of most
centuries. The real year 2000 as far as Muslim communities are concerned
already happened during the year 1420 of the Hijra. The real date of Jesus
according to modern scholars was in the year 4BC, making the date settle on
1996 and not the spurious date of 2000. Thus this brings about the question
why was everyone suddenly told a new date from a strong westernized,
Christian angle? 

We all remember the drama of the year 2k meltdown of our computers, and the
great spectacle, paranoia that arose out of it for the business¹s and home
computer users of the world. Western ŒDay time television programs¹ were
enjoying the confusion with endless phone ins, as the concerned public asked
what they should do if planes suddenly fell out of the sky. Or if their
computers suddenly ceased to work because of their clocks not turning over.
Then it happened, nothing. Relief swept Britain, Europe and the world as the
first two days of the new year showed few signs of damage from the
millennium computer bug.

Y2K was a computer processing problem that resulted from the way electronic
systems store dates. It was said that short-sighted programmers designed
computers to express years by the last two digits. The result was that any
date in the next century was liable to be confused with the previous
century. Older computers would of recognized January 1 2000 as January 1
1900, and so on. 

The more interesting element about the YK2 event that dominated the world¹s
press and consciousness, was that it formed (by default) great publicity of
the rogue date of the Millennium. Thus the year 2000 became the official
date. It seems that controlling the date of the new year and, the
x-Millennium event was very much a conscious power shift, of who controls
our global histories as well as control over monetary affairs. By
standardizing the time and place of Œso called significant¹ events and
symbolic occasions, one can re-invent our present day and the way we
perceive our localities, plus global situations. It was not religion that
dominated our recently imposed Millennium but money. For that is the new
chaotic god that cannot be questioned Œmoney works in mysterious ways¹. For
money does not itself fall into entropy but creates it as it shifts to
different areas, leaving cultural shifts. So now that our possible utopias
have been dissected via the process of enforced commodity, where does that
leave humanity? For now we are all becoming one world, not many. The
globalization, homogenization of many cultures becomes a white wash, an
economical cleansing. The underclass of the world will now become test
Œbodies¹, fodder for corporate experiments rooted in Œso called¹ ideological
imperatives, using the might of power hungry governments eager to maintain
control in their own mediated cultures.

So as we all get ready for next inhuman events (of course doctored
information) appearing on our news or at our very own doorsteps. The more
aware will have to ask the question of whether it is now time to actively
change the way things are going on this unhappy, pillaged planet. For these
false idols who rule our lives do not care for us, but care for themselves
and are blinded by their own structures to even see what real damage that
they inflicting to many innocent peoples lives. More people will have to
rise up and challenge all this killing and see why these imbeciles are
embarking on such backward movements to take away humanities essence and
beauty via their cynical and negative actions. Until then, as usual the
submissive types of this world will just wait till they are themselves are
imprisoned by war and all the trimmings that sit with it. As the more
insecure of nations draw their weapons to kill all who are different in the
name of Œpeace¹, yeah right! This planet will go through the inevitable
process of loss of identity, global warming, continued wars, hunger, and
even mass extinction of human(un)kind.

marc garrett

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://tekspost.no/mailman/private/syndicate/attachments/20020101/e920f8d5/attachment-0001.html>