The killing of 11 civilians in Baghdad two weeks ago has once again put Blackwater on the spot. The US security firm first came into the public eye in early April 2004, when four of its personnel were killed and mutilated by mobs in Falluja. Although Iraqi religious parties denounced the attacks at the time, Bush gave the town four days to deliver the perpetrators before ordering an all-out attack, one in which thousands of Falluja inhabitants perished. In his book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, American investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill links the modern security firm to the Knights of Malta, an offshoot of the Knights Templar. Blackwater’s employees, he argues, share the same religious zeal of ancient crusaders.

Joseph Edward Schmitz is the son of the late John G. Schmitz, former California State Senator, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and U.S. Presidential candidate (1972). Columba Bush’s sister is married to John P. Schmitz, a beneficiary of the fellowship programs subsumed under the Carl Duisberg gesellschaft and the brother of Joseph Schmitz, currently the head of the Blackwater security outfit. John P. Schmitz has close links to the elder George Bush, the 9/11 milieu…

Don,

I know what your getting at. That the Majestic Thugs where the ones to leave the death threat, and the harassment that ws going. Doing so that so I 'go off' on Dan Burisch thus serving their purposes.

I've thought about more then once believe it or not but quickly dismissed that possiblity based on the avalible evidence.

I originally came into the old golden thread here on godlike simply seeking the truth. I lurked for months and simply sat back and watched the conversation. The insiders, Marci and Dan etc. Simply sat back and absorbed the conversation also documented it all for the private associate I was working for at the time. A well known UF'er who wanted Dan and Marci observed for a possible show on prime time television. I provided weekly summery of the situation for his bebefit.

He was convinced and about to approach Dan and Marci until we conducted the final step. Filed F.O.I.A forking over 1,500 for the paperwork. He also contacted his sources in the true C.I.A and other agencies (Sources that have no interest in UFOs and think UF'rs are just plain crazy, none the less they also did some checking behind the scenes.) What we got back from both avenues was some 800 pages of Dan Crain Burisch live long Civilian with no hint what so ever that he or Marci were ever apart of anything. Black Ops or other wise. No discrepenies what so ever!

At which point my associate washed his hands of Dan Burisch and took possession of said documentation in case "the Hoax" ever made it prime time. Then and only then Burisch's paper work would see the light of day to expose the Hoax and the Hoaxees.

It was then and only then that Nightshade 09 (moi) made my appearence offically in the thread.

Why did I come into the saga if we had already discovered the truth? Well two reasons actually.

1. The discussion going, the thoughts people were sharing, the mental exerise, the hypotheical discussion of how Majestic Twelve might operate etc etc. The discussion was some of the greatest UF'er discussion on the Net. It still is btw.

2. Even though my associate had washed his hands of Dan Burisch and the Saga. There were bits and pieces to the Saga that peeked my curiosity and said to me "something Highly Strange is Going On Here." The Strangeness factor was nearly identical to that of a true UFO or UFO event related that I've experienced in the past. Thus I decided to hang around.

The more and more I read of the Saga, the more and more it became truly Unbelievable, Ill logical, unscientifically nonsensical and down right laughable. I was totally and still am skeptical of it (though time to time for the sake of discussion entertain possibility that he might be the real thing.)

It [the Saga] really became insane to me when Dan Burisch's insiders claimed to you and Pagemaker that I was "Black Ops" it was then and only then I decided to become Dan Burisch's offical antagonist for the Saga Story. Which I remain to this day I'm cruel that way. Like a cat that like play with its mouse before the final bite. The final bite will only come when and if my associate so deems it necessary.

If TV Producer is correct, that Burisch and Marci and seeking to bring their Internet Saga to small screen or are attempting to 'cash in'. I can assure you that F.O.I.A box of my associate has been taken out of the back closet and dusted off. The "Truth Nuke" as been armed and ready

With that said.

1. There has been on going 'high strangeness' going on beyond computer screen. Which still remains intriguing.

2. I can not confirm or deny that was 'hypothetically' a surveillance in Las Vegus. Such a operation would be deemed illegal in eyes of the law. Sorry can't say any more

3. I know without a shadow of a doubt whose voice was on the other end of a said answering machine.

4. What I've posted of my past has never been fiction.

5. I purposely remain shady. Because its fun, two it keeps whom ever is involved in this saga, keeps them guessing. When a person knows too much about you they have power over you. I refuse to give them that advantage.

6. EVERYTHING Burisch or Insiders have ever said about me in private or upon their board. Is COMPLETELY false, its made up, guess work and poor at that.

Personally I kind of hope they would post the truth. It would be proof positive of their claim! An cement their validity both in my mind and my associates. And most importantly for them get me off their back.

Yet to date they can't. Because guess work and outright lies are not truth.

Finally.... Here's the mind blower for you "Dan Is Our Hero" crowd.

Three months ago I learned my dear dear cyber pen pal is in the final stages of Lupus. She as of this posting is in a last ditch experimental study/treatment to arrest her Lupus if it does not work. Very good chances are she will not be among the living for long.

I wrote Marci McDowell and Dan Burisch, swallowed my pride and wrote them asking if by some chance in hell they may be the real thing and are working on some god given cure all. Might they offer some assistence in saving her life.

At this point I'd go to devil himself for help in saving her life. She is a very dear years long friend.


My response from Marci McDowell and Dan Burisch's email box was .... "Go to Hell!" In those very words.


That ladies and gentlemen Believers and Skeptics alike. IS THE REAL FACE OF DAN BURISCH.

Nightshade 09

Welcome back, Dex. Yes, an interesting discussion alright....... 'stirred' by a certain self-described 'TV Producer' at GLP.



Now we’re getting somewhere. A ‘well-known Ufer’ comes to you to ask you to “lurk n’ leak” to him, “for a possible TV production”. This sounds an awful lot like the “TV Producer”, Shady. I doubt it’s Kerry or Bill Ryan, as they simply seem to report what they’re told. The “TV Producer” thread shows an emotional bias against Burisch which doesn’t jibe with what we know of the Ryans, despite the fact the resume may fit. In fact, I’ve recently been told of an individual who WOULD fit the description, along with having the appropriate resume, but there were other people present at the ‘meeting’ in which Burisch and Hamilton were both at. Money was indeed discussed at that meeting, along with ‘rights’, etc. (I still don’t think money is at the heart of all this, even so.)

But I digress; you say this “well known Ufer” egged you on, and then did he or was it you that “forked over $1,500.00” for the FOIA documents? If it were you, and not him, I’d be pissed too, because I could have told you that was money better spent elsewhere. Either you misplaced your trust in this ‘ufer’, because being a ‘ufer’ he should’ve known that the FOIA is only going to tell you what they WANT you to know, NOT what you’re really looking for in a case like this. You of all people should know that; it’s the same thing as Burisch trying to say his quarter (okay, make it a half-dollar; that’s more appropriate anyway) is worth the whole dollar. Sure, those 800 pages can account for what you KNOW, but can’t account for what you DON’T know. If anything, it would explain how well Majestic has done their job of “hiding in plain sight”. Furthermore, having a big-name “ufer” manipulating you, even by asking for a minor weekly report, would tend to skew your perspective. How could it not? You were being used to play a role in “helping” the saga, with a prominent role promised you, and then the ‘authority figure’ dismisses the whole thing as a hoax? It sounds like Disclosure Faction A (SERPO/Aviary) may have been ahead of the game in getting a leg up on Faction B (D&M). I say that scenario would meet the bar of “plausibility”.

So, was it YOUR $1,500.00 spent on the FOIA documents, or his? Again, all of this may be helpful in explaining your ‘perspective’, but it only adds a new wrinkle without anything definitive (no value judgement about your 800 pages intended, of course).

Sooooo, why have you not RVed D+M shady?

also, if I am not mistaken a FOIA request does not work that way --
you cannot get info like that on private citizens -- you can request it of yourself,
you can make very specific requests regarding the working of Government Agencies -- and Public corporations... Even Journalists are having to fight to maintain this sort of access right now. It is a big battle.

but one private citizen, not even a journalist, Shady, can request that info of another private citizen....never could... still can't.

You can request your own file... and you will probably be lucky if you get it in about 6 months time -- and if you are luckier than my friend in DC - half of it will not be redacted.

I simply have to call you this latest yarn.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331&q=zeitgeist&total=1944&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Has anybody here seen the new Zeitgeist movie that was released in June? It's had over 4 million views, 46000 yesterday.

I found it to be quite informative. I is almost 2 hours in length. It is worth the watch though.

Sorry if this has been mentioned already.

love and peace

d

I simply have to call you this latest yarn.

remember when Bush referred to the invasion as a "CRUSADE?"

Now here is a MUST SEE video and don't let the fact that Ralph Nader said it deter you from watching. To make it easy, here's a virtual transcript.

Why Dems Won't Impeach Bush

What he said was that there have been a number of New England governments who have passed resolutions voting to impeach Bush.

In particular in the area of Stockbridge, MA - 13 towns with a 2/3 majority voted to impeach.

Democrat Congressman John Olvert - PhD - MIT in science, born in 1936 represents this area.

And when this particular congressman was confronted with the fact that a vast majority of his constituents voted to impeach Bush, he vehemently refused. Rather he expressed that the current autocratic executive, (meaning the White House) would attack Iran from the air, declare a national emergency and call off the 2008 elections were the Democrats to initiate impeachment proceedings.

He also said that Congressman Olvert is not known to be any kind of off-the-wall maverick so that if this is the way they are thinking in WA D.C. things are a lot worse than we thought. If it is accurate, things are worse than we thought and if it is NOT accurate, they are a lot more paranoid than we thought.

Either way, the Dems are not functioning as a proper opposition party.

[edited to add]: Back a page,


Shady, I did a quick google of the FOIA, and it appears one must send an FOIA request to specific agencies; there's no "Central FOIA Agency" or anything. There are many samples of FOIA request letters, put out by each of the agencies that are usually the keepers of the requested information, but you have to write each one specifically.

While we're waiting on a sample of the kind of information you received (see above: which magazines were subscribed to the Burisch household, newspaper subscriptions, etc.), exactly what agencies did you make a request to? The big ones, to help jog your memory, are the DOJ (Dept of Justice), the DoD (Dept of Defense), the Nat'l Archives, the FDA......which ones did you submit a request to?

Here's a sample letter form that most agencies recommend using; can you help us understand the variant you used?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Agency Head [or Freedom of Information Act Officer]
Name of Agency
Address of Agency
City, State, Zip Code
Re: Freedom of Information Act Request

Dear _____________:

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
I request that a copy of the following documents [or documents
containing the following information] be provided to me:
[identify the documents or information as specifically as possible.]
In order to help to determine my status to assess fees, you should know
that I am [insert a suitable description of the requester and the
purpose of the request.]


[Sample requester descriptions:
a representative of the news media affiliated with the ________________
newspaper (magazine, television station, etc.), and this request is
made as part of a news gathering and not for commercial use.
affiliated with an educational or noncommercial scientific institution,
and this request is made for a scholarly or scientific purpose and not for
commercial use.
an individual seeking information for personal use and not for commercial use.
affiliated with a private corporation and am seeking information for use in the
company's business.]
[Optional] I am willing to pay fees for this request up to a maximum of $____.
If you estimate that the fees will exceed this limit, please inform me first.
[Optional] I request a waiver of all fees for this request. Disclosure of the
requested information to me is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute
significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government
and is not primarily in my commercial interest. [Include a specific explanation.]
Thank you for your consideration of my request.


Sincerely,
Name Address City, State, Zip Code Telephone Number [Optional]

shady - what agency sent you info on magazine subscriptions?

don't give me the "I don't remember"

you will have to prove that one of them will... which one is it Shady?



who can I write to - to request that info?

Exactly Don thus the $1,500 a price I couldn't pull out of my pocket and I did say we sent requests to numerous agencies.

Shady

"Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 - 12:53 am: Whitley Strieber post 150 - Cabin Stories thread, UFO and Ufology

The grays were initially very interested in the government people, which was why they were brought to the cabin. Anne and I tried to be hospitable to them, but we were concerned about the effect on them. None of the, not the ones ddubbiedo met or any of the others, were in any way prepared, not by their lives or by any involvement or knowledge. The grays got what I would call downloads from them, then ignored them. We had no choice but to allow them to come. There were quite a few of them who we would meet by the sort of artificial happenstance constructed by the grays.

There was a setup at the cabin that allowed the grays to do a really thorough analysis of a human being. These "psychic readings" that I did were preparation for later deep analysis by the grays.

Ddubbiedo was present one night when this process was going on, but she was not treated to later downloading by the grays. Fortunately, she was only an observer, because the consequence of that downloading was that it would lead the subject to a permanently diminished life. What the grays looked at in these people was taken from them.

All of the gov't people who were treated to it have suffered an emptying of their lives, including the gentleman she refers to. Whatever his opinion of me, he essentially destroyed himself by his flirtation with the grays. He should never have approached me at all, but he did, and the consequences, sadly, are there, and will not only persist in this life, but go with his soul.

To engage in the secrecy and duplicity that the government requires regarding this matter carries with it a tremendous and permanent personal penalty, and by permanent, I do not just refer to the few short years we define, in our state of illusion, as a "life."

After that year of observation of government representatives, the grays lost interest in the government completely. As far as I know, government insiders no longer have meaningful contact with the grays. They have drawn the conclusion that the US government is not important to the human future. Make of that what you will."

"Exactly"...... what? Shady, I don't think you realize how serious this issue is; you've made claims that D&M have lied, and while the record DOES show some "creative prevarication" was apparently used by them (in lieu of calling it a lie; perhaps we can come to the same conclusion here with you), you also engaged in the same kind of pursuits, it seems.

You say you received "800 pages in a single package" from your requests; okay then, WHICH of the agencies sent it? Do you recall ANY of the "numerous agencies" you placed a request with? Was there a cover letter included, what agency did it come from, who signed it? As Starry asks, which agency would even HAVE information on "magazine subscriptions etc"? A quick review of the first page of googling results on the FOIA shows there is ALSO a "right to privacy" that individuals do have, regarding such issues. That claim is equivalent to the FBI unlawfully obtaining your library records and even phone call records, without a court order, and then turning this information over to a different private citizen! I can accept "high strangeness", but you have to admit, unless you can name some proper names (agencies, individuals, names of magazine or newspaper subscriptions, etc.) this is going into the category of "high fiction". Even a description of the "package" would help; look at the thickness of a 500-sheet ream of blank paper; no envelope I know of can even hold that. Did it arrive USPS, UPS, DHL or FedEx? We don't need to know the entire range of particulars; name just one magazine subscription and we can put this matter to rest.

Before you get too worked up, keep in mind that these are very reasonable questions, and don't even begin to approach the bar of understanding I've had to go through regarding the 'Blackbird' Files; in fact, I fear that if he hadn't been caught and killed already (you know how those SNEDs thugs make "creatively prevaricating claims"), he probably was after I made those posts. So you see, making claims such as you are doing, without having even one iota of proper nouns to back them up, hurts my ability --- hurts our ability as a group of sceptical truthseekers -- to ask for SNEDs to be truthful in THEIR claims.

Think about this.

I can’t toss down the Stake and let you all fest to your hearts desire. Its NOT my stake to toss. An I'm growing weary of being called the bad guy in this.

sorry Shady -- there is no "Stake" involved in answering this question...
your story totally does not fly

I have asked the most simple question ... it does not even have to do with DB... but regarding anyone.

From what agency would you request information regarding magazine subscription information?






(I do still have some friends over at the Center for Public Integrity -- they are very experienced and have a lot of info on FOIA requests)

Well, it finally happened. For the first time since becoming host of Dreamland in 1999, I have had a fight with a guest on the air. As you know, I cultivate a very special approach to my guests. In order to draw them out and make them feel at home, I’m unreservedly enthusiastic about their ideas. I keep my own beliefs to myself.

The result is that I’m sometimes attacked by listeners who think that my efforts to encourage my guests are an endorsement of their assertions. But I figure that’s a small price to pay for being virtually the only large interview program out there where guests are actively drawn out so that listeners get to hear their real beliefs—often, things that they literally never say elsewhere.

This time, it didn’t work quite that way. The guest was Daniel Pinchbeck. I won’t go into what I think of his ideas. Actually, I think that they’re well worth entertaining. Some of his hopes for the future of mankind are touching and very appealing.

So what was the fight about? Just this: he accused me of being in league with dark alien forces that do not have the best interests of the human species at heart. He said that I was spreading a dark view of the human future and that, by doing so, I was helping them make it come true.

I understand that the secrecy of the visitors is the reason that what I regard as superstitions have grown up around them, and also that I am in the awkward position of knowing them too well to have any such confusion. I know what they are: complex, passionate and intricately intelligent people who sacrifice a great deal to come here, and are trying with all their might and main to help us through a difficult phase in the life of our species without destroying our independence by revealing too much of their breathtaking knowledge and technology to us.

I have been face to face with the anguish this causes them. Among them, I have seen a sadness unlike anything we know among ourselves, that is born of too great an understanding of the way the universe really works, and the grand and tragic position of intelligent life, to know.

Among them I have seen the mad and the vicious, as well as the brilliant and sacred. There are criminals among them, too, profiteers, thieves, you name it. Often, they are vulnerable and afraid, and this makes them mean. I’ve been a victim of their rough treatment, and a beneficiary of their gentleness.

When, as an adult, I first met them, I reacted like a wild animal—and they reacted like what they were, small, vulnerable creatures who had taken a wild animal into their home.

Imagine if you drugged a panther and brought it into your living room, then woke it up to see how it would react. Well, if it was just any panther, you might not do that. But what if it was a panther that, when it was a cub, you had cuddled and tamed? You might expect it to recognize you.

This panther did not recognize one damn thing. To them, we’d only been apart a short time. To me, they were demons who had come out of nowhere and they scared me so terribly that this particular gentleman became a roaring, raging monster.

But they were not, and are not, evil. Oh, some of them are unpleasant as hell. There is terrific xenophobia there—or what we see as xenophobia. But would you embrace a panther? No, you wouldn’t, but to the panther that’s going to look like you don’t care for it a whole lot.

I have addressed the reasons for the secrecy in these pages a number of times. There are three main ones: first, the visitors would destroy our free will if they exposed us to their knowledge and technology; second, we—in the form of our governments—have reacted to them by doing what we can to hide their presence, and they have respected that; third, the physics of contact are very, very difficult, and unless it is handled by two species who understand its inherent dangers and can cope with them, there is danger that the less-informed species will, essentially, have its access to reality deranged so badly that it will go mad.

They are here because we are at a period of transition in the life of our species, and they are hoping to assist us without destroying us in the process, and that is going to be a very near thing.

Pinchbeck accuses me of bringing on a dark future by predicting it. That’s magical thinking, and just as impotent as its opposite—that you can create a positive future by believing in it.

I say in the program that I believe that mankind is going to experience a dieback, and this makes Pinchbeck furious because he fears that just by saying something like that, it will become true. I don’t want to put words in another man’s mouth, but I had the impression that he sees me as a sort of viral particle of negativism, and that my perspective is designed to bring on the destructions of which I warn—presumably, so that my evil alien masters can inherit the ruined planet, I suppose.

What is so silly about this is the idea that they would want our planet, our bodies, our souls, our genes or anything we have. Are you ready to run off to the Congo to get their cassava? I don’t think so. But you might be moved to go there to help relieve their suffering, even if they have nothing to give you in return. We don’t even have much of one of the fuels they actually do use and mine in nature, which is Helium 3. The moon has a lot of it, but they’re not up there taking it, at least not in great quantity, because they know we will need it soon, and that the process of getting it will help advance our species scientifically, culturally and technologically.

I wish that the visitors would expose us to more of the history of intelligent species in this universe. For there is such a history, with names and dates, and stories of the ruin and triumph of worlds. Diebacks are so common that they are not remarkable. They’re footnotes, and in ten thousand years, the one we’re about to go through will be a footnote in the history of mankind, too. A much larger issue is species death consequent to the deterioration of DNA. Intelligent species tend to outlast the amount of time that nature expected them to survive, and to get old in ways that we won’t need to worry about for at least another million years—but which will, in those distant times, occupy our attention far more than do present upheavals.

The history of intelligent life in the universe is not a history of magic. It is not about god-beings and mysterious galactic superminds playing in the lives of their wretched planetary underlings. Our gods are in our minds.

Rather, it is a history of what it is like to live in a place that is by the nature of its structure, damn dangerous.

Many intelligent species have become extinct simply because their planet has taken a hit at the wrong moment, or their star has burped a little too forcefully. Just at random. They’ve gone down, no doubt, calling on their gods and cursing their gods, and begging forgiveness for sins that never mattered at all.

One of the great problems that our present visitors face is that they have attained something close to absolute knowledge, and so they know, in advance, where most of these accidents are going to happen. They also know that they can prevent some of them. They live with a terrific ethical quandary: should they? If a species is ugly and probably going to kill itself off anyway, should they just let some cosmic accident happen, or should they quietly intervene, in the deep of space, and redirect that asteroid, or quiet the turmoil in a star?

What is fate? What is its meaning? To such people, who are at the extreme limit of knowledge, these are the questions that keep them from going stark, raving mad. And they don’t work for all of them, believe you me.

Too much knowledge has cursed our visitors with a lack of spontaneity. It is why, when I asked one of them, an old man whom I’d met a few times, what his vision of the universe was, he answered me by projecting a picture of a closed coffin into my mind.

They do not fight much, but there is one thing that I know every man-jack of them will fight for to his last drop of blood, and that is the spontaneity that our limited knowledge grants us. They traded this away by seeking too many answers, and they are suffering the consequences. They don’t want that to happen to us, and they also do want to be close to us, to enter our lives in whatever ways they can, so that they can taste of the surprise that life brings us.

Maybe it’s selfish of them, and it certainly isn’t pretty, but there it is. Right now, they are in an increasingly desperate quandary: their efforts to get us to help ourselves are failing. So, do they ‘come out’ or not? If they do, can the contact be executed in such a way that we don’t see the full reality of the situation? But if they don’t fully reveal themselves, the denial that is so deeply engrained in us will continue to function, and we still will not acknowledge them, heed their warnings, or, above all, pick up on the immensely subtle science, which, if we are willing to wrestle with our own minds to understand it, can help us to survive in our earth, and to enter worlds beyond.

Pinchbeck is right about me in one respect. I do think that there’s going to be a dieback of the human species, and I do not think that anything can be done to avoid it. Certainly, it can be ameliorated and even, to an extent, controlled, but it is going to happen.

The reason that I’m sure of this could not be more simple. In nature, there is a formation called a bell curve. When the ascending shoulder of a bell curve develops, the descending shoulder follows. Nothing goes up for ever. Entropy always sets in. It must. That’s the way that physics works. I said it on the show—at least, I think I did—and it’s worth repeating here. Nature is numbers. It’s math, pure and simple.

The human species is just reaching the apogee of a bell curve of consumption and population expansion that began in about 1750. The planet’s resources are going to run out, because we are, of necessity, consuming them too fast. Clever technology will enable some of us to climb down the far side of the bell curve, undoubtedly. But for most human beings, it will look like and be a sheer cliff.

Species expansion and contraction happens all the time on this planet. Ideal conditions come along for a given species and it overexpands. Then conditions change and it contracts again. It just happens. The mathematics of nature.

Another thing that happens around here a lot is catastrophe. Volcanoes explode, global warming causes massive methane emissions and short term extreme heating. Then it all snaps back into another ice age. It’s been like this for about three million years, and will continue to be like this as long as the land masses of the planet are configured as they are. When they change, as they will, so also will the climate.

In addition to more-or-less random changes in the planet itself, we are also the victims of external forces. Supernovas occasionally sheet the planet in gamma rays. Comets and bolides crash into it. Close encounters with celestial objects sometimes play havoc with it.

What’s more, from minute to minute, we have essentially no idea whether or not these things might or might not happen again. Literally, another second could bring about the end of the world.

So we look to our gods. In that, at least, we are not alone. Intelligent life in this universe is on a quest—in fact, it may, itself, BE the quest, but that’s another story—and this quest is to find some meaning somewhere out there past that coffin my alien friend sees as his vision of the world.

And now we get to the heart of the matter, something that even the visitors do not fully realize, as extensive as their knowledge is. It is that we—highly intelligent ourselves, and possessed of marvelously sensitive physical instruments—are at the leading edge of the ages-long journey toward God. We are real experts in this, and their greatest fear is that, if they were to reveal their own failure to us, they would disrupt our search.

Recently, the nature of the human search—its stark truth—was exposed in a most remarkable way. The private journals of Mother Teresa of Calcutta were made public, and it was revealed that she struggled all of her life with the sense that there was a darkness there, where God should be.

The instant I saw that, I knew that her life had been entirely authentic, that she was a real saint. For it is the work of a saint to see that darkness and go about the business of faith anyway. In all of her years, she doubted. No doubt she longed for another, lighter, more pleasant life. But even though she had only a sense of this darkness—she was sustained by no illusions, no false gods, no loving Jesus of the imagination—she still acted as if God was there, and suffering mattered, and compassion made a difference.

She did so while, in the inevitable mathematics of reality, there is an asteroid or a comet or a supernova out there that will one day strike the earth again, and shudder her to her core, and make us, by pure random chance, a memory. Unless we come to species death in some other way.

In another of these journals, I reported my mother’s perspective on the randomness and tragedy of being. She used to say, simply, “trust grace.” Mother Teresa faced the dark and kept on anyway. That’s trusting grace in its rawest, hardest form.

And it’s also why I argued so vehemently with Daniel Pinchbeck. To pretend that we will pull off some sort of a miracle that will somehow cause two and two to add up to something other than four is to trust nothing. Of course the human intellect will ameliorate the coming disaster. This is why our intellect evolved. We started the last ice age naked and living in the forest. We ended it clothed and living in the plains…where the forest used to be. In other words, we used our intelligence to save ourselves.

We will do that again, and some of us will indeed be saved. But not all. The dieback is, by the math of it, inevitable. And with it will come a true dark night of the soul, as all of our gods abandon us. In our suffering, also, we will begin to blame each other. In fact, that’s already happening. The environmentalists blame the oil companies. The oil companies blame the tree huggers, and everybody, it seems, blame the madly polluting Chinese, even the Chinese themselves.

You know what, though? Nobody is to blame. At least, not us. Nature is to blame. The reason is that, because we were so vulnerable for so long, we lost our seasonal fertility and at the same time acquired extremely prominent genitals that are rich with nerve endings. Add to that our fine memories, and we have been turned into rutting machines.

This happened because we were so few and so far between for so long. When we did live in that old forest, our population was sparse, indeed. So nature compensated by making us more sexy. Then came the ice age and we were well-served by that eager sexuality. It helped us to survive that catastrophe, too.

Afterward, though, the planet entered into one of its periodic and brief interglacials. Not brief enough, however, to prevent our fertility and sexuality from working against us in exactly the same way it does when algae bloom under ideal conditions. Remove the conditions, and there’s going to be a dieback.

That’s where we are. But there is a difference between us and algae, which is this marvelous brain of ours. So we have a bit of a percentage in our favor. We’re going to figure out some ways to help ourselves crash land instead of crash.

In a hundred years, there are not going to be as many of us here as there are now, and saying that does not mean that, by some sort of black magic, I will be responsible for it happening.

There is no reason to fear extinction. Species death is a long way away. But dieback, no. We’re on our way down that side of the bell curve—at least, in this man’s opinion.

Listen to Dreamland. Enjoy the fight. I hope it makes you think, and I am sure that Daniel Pinchbeck agrees with me, at least on that point.