IS THIS SINKING IN WITH ANYBODY?

Dec 3, 2008, 11:45 PM PST

Pls read this short quote from a Reuters story about Pak-India relations at this moment.

"RISE IN TENSIONS"

"Pakistan has promised to act but insists it needs tangible proof, and has also indicated it will not accept an Indian demand to hand over 20 of its most wanted men that New Delhi says are living in Pakistan.

"When pressed on whether she would push Pakistan to hand over the 20, Rice skirted around the issue and said she did not want to "get into the specifics.'

"But she made clear any response by India should not lead to increased tensions between the neighbors, who have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947."

''Any response needs to be judged by its effectiveness in prevention and also by not creating other unintended consequences or difficulties,' Rice said.

In a two-pronged effort to put pressure on the Pakistanis, the top U.S. military commander visited Islamabad while Rice was in India, urging that country to broaden its campaign against militant groups following the attacks in Mumbai."

That was from this Reuters story:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4B00LI20081204?sp=true.

Let me spell it out slowly...

India has demanded that Pakistan surrender what may be as many as twenty of its own nationals to a foreign state for justice. Pakistan is being told to surrender the essence of its statehood. For any state that cannot protect its citizens from an external power is no longer a state. This is why states exist and why they were created in the first place. Ninety per cent of the Indian population believes that the NATION of Pakistan planned and executed the attacks. They want retribution. To quote our brilliant commenter Mary, "Does this look like an exit strategy to you?" (That was a fabulous piece of writing, Mary!) China is looking at civil unrest and elites within American banking are getting their butts kicked. In the meantime, the Fed is lending at 1900 times the amount it was two years ago and ALL of that money is getting sucked into the vortext of Wall Street... while NONE of it is reaching Main Street. This looting is so transparent as to be laughable and they're scaring us all into accepting it.

I make 50:50 odds that Pakistan and India will exchange nuclear weapons within the next two months. Where it goes from there is anyone's guess. This was a possible outcome of Peak Oil we placed on our map many years ago. The dieoff begins; and whether it becomes first apparent this way or some other makes no difference. Let's fantasize for a moment. Let's say my new book was out and doing well and that somehow evolved into meeting Mr. Obama. (My book eviscerates his enegry policy.) But, as Jim Kunstler just wrote elsewhere, what if he does know all this and can't say?... Well, if I were to meet him, and he were to ask... I would tell him that after a lifetime of effort and dedication I have distilled the problem down to this: Somewhere in between 2 and four billion people are going to have to die. The question is whether it will happen haphazardly and in a way that might end all life, or whether mankind will collectively admit and recognize the problem. And should it somehow manage to admit the problem, will it then try to find a way to achieve a better outcome, according to a new set of values which have not yet been defined? Values and beliefs which are being fought over at this very second?

Things are out of control because an epoch is ending and a new era of life is dawning. It's going to be very messy..., but then most of the good things in life are.

To Shorebreak: Anyone who has played in this game a while and managed to stay knows that anyone who comes up with a pat answer right after a major event -- too quickly -- doesn't have a clue... I am absolutely NOT convinced that India is the winner here. It is quite possible that everyone -- all of us -- will lose. This is not a plan. You watch the firestarters too closely and you'll miss the blaze that consumes you. I know the firestarters. I have spent much of my life teaching people about them; who they are and how they work. What I have warned about for so long is that the children playing with matches would possibly kill all of us, even themselves one day. Well, guess what?

The dinosaurs are about to start falling... and they'll be taking some of us with them. It has been a heavy week and the clouds have been darkening here in Culver City as a metaphor for the world as a whole. Two nights ago I wondered why, for no reason, CNN had a home page headline story with a big picture of Adolf Hitler... for no newsworthy reason. The next morning I woke up and one of the lead stories everywhere was that the next big terror attack on the U.S. would likely be a bioweapon... Sigh...

There's something very Jungian about all of this isn't there?

Of course, no mention that the Anthrax from the congressional attacks was concentrated at a billion spores per gram and could only have come from USAMRID. (Google it!)

Go back and look at Rubicon. Look at FTW. Look at all the mysterious deaths of microbiologists around the world after 9-11. Look at the work FTW did on the quest for gene-specific bioweapons. Yes, we're being prepared for some heavy shit. But we're being prepared by a crew on a sinking and damaged submarine that's doing everything it can to keep from sinking to the bottom of the ocean... Like the Titanic, maybe? Drowning things flail and thrash mightily don't they?

That goes back to one other comment from a "newbie" (I don't write that derisively) asking about what to do.

I will repeat myself here for the zillionth time... gladly.

Trees are falling in many different directions at the same time. What you need are open eyes and flexibility.

1. Get out of debt as much as possible.
2. Start saving.
3. Stay liquid.
4. Thoroughly evaluate and maximize opportunities within 5-10 miles of where you live. Make friends.
5. Do not panic.

What we all need now are options... choices. Doing what I just said gives you more choices. While many of you guys are fondly dreaming of windmills, permacutlure and twittering butterflies in harmonious rapture with grizzly bears, I'm trying to fgiure out how we get through the next six days, six weeks, or six months.

I find that my reaction to all this is that every day I and my dawg Rags seeks to cause as many smiles as possible, to invest time in friends as much as possible, and to live as much as possible. We, as human beings, "are at our best when things are worst." As Siddhartha might have said... "Life sucks but it is very good."

MCR
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Every couple of weeks I ask my students, "What's the inflation rate in Zimbabwe right now?"

There's always some bright-eyed young thing who eagerly proffers, "2.3 Million Per Cent" or "230 Million Per Cent" or whatever it was last time I asked.

As of November 14, says the Cato Institute, it's 89.7 Sextillion Per Cent. That's 21 zeroes, according to a kid from Tajikistan who consulted his calculator.

They didn't know how good they had it when a carton of eggs was a paltry 2.3 Million dollars.

This seems relevant somehow, the poorer countries being the canaries in the mine.

Yes I do think the India/Pakistan situation is sinking in with members of this blog. We're all a little paralyzed, hoping that understanding will bring clarity about what to do. Hence the sifting through the rubble, the reading of the charred tea-leaves.

Inertia is possibly the strongest force in human nature. People don't change til they have to. Or even after, locking the barn door once the horse has fled. They will twist reality to conform to the paradigm they grew up with. They will think they are thinking, but it's more like scheming, operating within their comfortable, familiar framework. To give it up is almost like Pakistan relinquishing its statehood.

Which also seems to have been on the agenda for a while. Obama's had it in his sights since at least 2007 and someone recently circulated a map of a new Pakistan Balkanized along ethnic lines. (Sound familiar?)

The other force at play here, alluded to in Mike's article above, is what some members of this blog might call "machismo." TPTB, whoever they are in whatever given country, are not known for putting the lives of their people ahead of their "sovereign honor." To die with dignity is better than to live with shame, goes that line of thinking. Never mind how many go down with you. To paraphrase a sage of this century, W, evoking a sage of the last, Keynes, "In the long run, we're all dead."

And now I sit back and wait for the waves of emails about Mike's line, "Somewhere between 2 and four billion people are going to have to die."

Kunstler's article
And for the uninitiated, the original website on die-off

JO