gospel according to government

148 - Review the year - 2024

Roger Price

28 Dec 2024 • 12 min read

Sunrise - looking east every morning - enjoy the view

🇹🇭 V and I are celebrating yet another Christmas in Bangkok - this is our third in recent years and Bangkok is just great at this time of year. Like last year I'm taking the opportunity of the Christmas-New year period to reflect and review the year past and we are busy checking and confirming our plans and bookings for 2025. How has your year been? Hope you hit all your goals and did everything that was important for you.

Our year started in Bangkok, enjoying the great weather here - it is much better here than HK in January and February! There were lots of biking trips, including to Ayutthaya and out of town around Bangkok - these were great fun. I also took the opportunity in February to have a small operation done since the medical services here are among the best in the world and very accessible. It grounded me for a few weeks but I am now fully recovered and glad to have had it done here.

A fun day out on the bike - to Ayutthaya

By the end of March, Bangkok is already getting rather hot and this year it seemed to be even hotter than usual so it was time for us to move on. First stop was back in Holywood to celebrate my Dad's 91st birthday and meet up with all the family there. We even had the family in Belgium come over to meet us.

Holywood Priory - where it all started - Sanctus Boscus

From Holywood we went back to Palma de Mallorca. This is one of our favourite mediterranean islands and this year we had a great apartment near Catalina market in Palma.

During our stay in Palma we took the opportunity for a few visits to meet family and friends. First trip was Belgium to celebrate V's mum's birthday and a few weeks later we also did another trip to Holywood and Antwerp for more family time.

Back in Mallorca we thoroughly enjoyed our swimming pool and the other facilities at the Tennis Club. We also got to welcome family visiting us in Palma - nice!

Gotta love the Tennis club and their facilities

By the end of June it also gets rather hot in Palma and the incoming tourists begin to become an annoyance so it was then time to move on again. We headed back to Belfast for the summer, staying near the Kings Hall which is convenient to visit family and friends there and in Holywood. We had a great apartment there, beside the golf course and this year the weather was very marginally better (less awful) than last year!

Cultra - a nice walk along Belfast Lough

Late August it was again time to move on so we headed off to Belgium to meet up and stay with V's family there. We had a great time at the Belgian coast with many bike rides and beach walks before heading to the Big Smoke of Antwerp to meet friends there too. We enjoyed all the locations and the weather was not bad!

After Belgium we needed to get in one more mediterranean island. Last time that I was in Palermo in Sicily was when I did Interrail aged 18, so you can imagine that it had changed somewhat and my memories were a bit vague. Palermo really exceeded our expectations and we had a great month there with a fabulous apartment in the center, on the main walking street.

Before heading back to SE Asia we did one last trip back to Holywood. We had surprisingly decent (ie not bad) weather and our son even managed to get over to see us from Belgium so we had a few good family gatherings.

Bangor ahead of our trip back to SE Asia

In October it was time to get back home to Hong Kong for a bit. With all the travel we have things that need sorted here as well as plenty of friends to see and things to do. October and November are the best months of the year to be in HK and I got in hiking and walking most days. Unusually we had three typhoons in November - normally the last one of the year is in September. We did not let that spoil our fun.

As we rolled into December it was time to get back to Bangkok for the winter. This year we have a great apartment near Petchaburi. We love being in Bangkok at this time of year and we have friends in town over Christmas and into next week so we have plenty to do!

Recommended watching

In case you are fed up with the crap on TV over the holiday period, I highly recommend that you watch The Prisoner by Patrick McGoohan. This remarkable series was released on BBC (in the good old days) - back in 1967.

Click to watch on Lookmovie - you may need to use VPN to get outside your country

With three more years of hindsight since I first watched this, even I see more in it than I noticed before - I'm older and wiser, I guess. Having said that, I found this review of the series by a historian that I follow. He points out much that I missed and I have to recommend you watch his review. Much will be clear to you.

An excellent summary and analysis of the series - see specific links below

04:30 Politics and Subversion, 06:55 Mandatory Fun and Pathologised Dissent
09:00 Rules and Suspicions, 11:15 It Means What It Is
13:50 Once Upon a Time . . ., 15:00 Fallout, 18:57 Looking Back

Anatomy of the State - link fixed

Sorry that last week's link for the audiobook of Anatomy of the State was broken so I have fixed it now - also here. Links to specific chapters are below:

00:00 What the State is Not, 04:27 What the State Is, 10:05 How the State Preserves Itself, 25:15How the State Transcends Its Limits, 43:57 What the State Fears, 47:47 How States Relate to One Another
55:32 History as a Race Between State Power and Social Power

🛠️ Project Updates

Primal is an important part of the Nostr Ecosystem and it has just been released in its second, full-featured version. Check back to Milijan's interview with Matt a year ago when he talked about what was planned for this year - he and the team have certainly delivered.

Primal 2.0

I am really excited to see Primal 2.0 being released. This marks my second anniversary using Nostr, working on/with and supporting Primal. The work that Milijan and the team have done is amazing and I encourage you to read his walkthrough.

When you are at it, create your own Nostr Profile and you can follow me there.

As we move into the new year, I will be doing and posting more on Nostr and leveraging Cashu - you might want to get started be ahead of the curve.

Message to family and friends

For those of you who have no bitcoin I do encourage you to read GiGi's open letter.

He wrote this back in April 2020 and every word is as true and relevant now as it was then. You can also benefit from more than 4 years of hindsight. If you want to take practical steps, refer back to Newsletter #14.

🤔 Closing Thoughts

A couple of closing thoughts for this Christmas and New Year period. Firstly a "gospel" reading by Larken Rose (recall the Jones Plantation). Secondly an explainer from Jason on the "Christian Reich". Going forward you will see that this becomes weaponised to divide people and nations against eachother. Do not fall for it and do not participate - withdraw your consent.

The Gospel according to Government

12 years ago, Larken did this reading. Listen to this and much will become clear to you. As he says: "Some people might be truly offended who do not need to be and some people won't be offended when they totally should be". WDYT and where are you on the spectrum?

A fabulously clear and insightful read by Larken Rose

Apologetics and the Great Lie

You may or may not be aware of all the furore around Billy Carson recently. Suffice to say that Billy is a "useful idiot influencer" that Jason has been calling out for several years for misrepresenting facts and lying by omission. Billy has recently run out of road and fallen victim to a coordinated attack by the "Christian Reich" that Jason has also warned about for years.

I introduced you to this already more than a year ago with Caesar's Messiah and some of Jason's earlier analysis. Jason is currently travelling in Texas but took time out to share this explainer.

Writings from first century AD are full of references to the Phoenix showing widespread knowledge of its history and significance. However NO first century authors recorded Jesus' miracles, life, crucifixion or resurrection. These events only appear in documents from the second century AD and later.

Click for Jason's explainer and history lesson

I'll let you draw your own conclusions. You may even had your own suspicions or heard similar information from other sources. This is the time of ἀποκάλυψις.

Forward to a friend and let them know where they can subscribe

No one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
- Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix

How to escape the matrix - do you see it yet?

🤔

"99% of all subjects accepted the program if they were given a choice - even if they were only aware of the choice at an unconscious level"
- The Architect

Any questions or anything else? Feel free to comment below!
You can also email me at: LetterFrom@rogerprice.me

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