You know, we passed chutzpah with Bush/Cheney when they stole the 2000 election. So, after the planned and executed attacks of September 11th, coordinated by Dick Cheney; after the bogus inavsion of Iraq; and after the planned looting and destruction of the U.S. economy; it makes perfect sense that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed allegedly confesses along with Ramsi Bin al Shibh on the very last day of the Bush administration. It doesn't matter that the one photo they show of him reportedly taken right after his 2003 capture isn't him (Thanks again Paul Thompson). It doesn't matter that he was reported killed by multiple news sources days before his "capture". It doesn't matter that not once since his capture has he been seen in any photograph or by any witness outside Guantanamo. None of it matters much anymore. They got away with all of it. And when the five presidents had their photo taken, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. had Obama surrounded like a gangland kidnapping with Clinton and Carter standing off to the side. It looked to me like they were grateful for the distance.
Like I said, the Bush base was always going to steal Iraq's oil, loot the economy, transfer the wealth, break a million laws, destroy tens of millions of lives... and we're going to give them a parade just to get "rid" of them.
T'was the night before inauguration and all through the house...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090119/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_guantanamo_sept11_trial
MCR
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JO adds:
Thanks for that link, Jeff!
Quote of the day:
When America’s economy was young and competitive it survived slumps and crashes without medical intervention. Now, every passing cold requires feeding tubes. And this latest bout of influenza has the doctors in a panic. They are casting aside warnings and giving the patient masses doses of the old quack treatments. They’ll increase the dosage – until they run out of supplies – and then switch to those new, experimental medicines that have recently been used in field trials by Dr. Gono in Zimbabwe. Since they cannot leave well enough alone – the public won’t stand for it – they will keep giving bigger and bigger doses, of more and more dangerous medicines, until the patient dies. The Daily Reckoning
Pirates Through a Different Lens
More Americans Join Military as Jobs Dwindle
Soylent Oil in Beverly Hills
Gangs of America
Excellent analysis of the rise of corporations in the US; their role in the Civil War and their appropriation of the constitutional rights afforded individuals.
Allusions to "from the wilderness" on Donna Brazile
24 comments:
Honestly, I have absolutely no problems with turning into Carl Spackler from Caddyshack once TSHTF.
I mean, you know we're gonna need some humor, and if the human condition is one thing, it's total comedy and absurdity ... like Jean Paul Sartre would say. HA!
Sandy: I want you to kill every gophers on the golf course!
Carl Spackler: Correct me if I'm wrong Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers, they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key...
Sandy: Not golfers, you great fool! Gophers! The *little* *brown*, *furry* *rodents* -!
Carl Spackler: We can do that; we don't even have to have a reason. All right, let's do the same thing, but with gophers -!
"Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac... It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"
"License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote."
"So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."
Ty Webb: A flute without holes, is not a flute. A donut without a hole, is a Danish.
Ty Webb: This your place, Carl?
Carl Spackler: Yeah, whatta ya think?
Ty Webb: It's really... awful.
Carl Spackler: Well, I got a lot of stuff on order. You know... credit trouble.
Ty Webb: You've got to win this hole.
Danny Noonan: I kinda thought winning wasn't important
Ty Webb: Me winning isn't. You do.
Danny Noonan: Great grammar.
Judge Smails: Well, we're waiting!
Al Czervik: Hey! Can you make a Bullshot?
Tony D'Annunzio: Can you make a shoe smell?
Al Czervik: Very funny. Why don't you get yourself a real haircut? Here, take this.
Imagine if the government, rather than putting all of its money toward the military, concentrated it all toward the creation of true genius comedy like this. What would this world be like?
And that might have been another good way to start the 2-5 billion die off scenario - I mean my stomach really hurts right now.
The more that lurkers come out of hiding to contribute to this blog, the more I am struck by how many “savvy” Peak Oilers are latent useless eaters, i.e. conscious of the magnitude of what is about to break yet powerless, within their own lives, to take a first step towards protecting themselves and their families. There is much subjective hand-wringing and spiritual masturbation, neither of which will protect one from the elements nor supply needed nutrition. Until one separates oneself from the herd to take appropriate action, one is of the herd, nose stuck up the asshole of the beast in front for delusional warmth and security.
NAmericans have never experienced the degree of social upheaval and transformation that hovers on the horizon. We are barely able to imagine it, let alone prepare for it. Allow me to repeat myself once more: within a global scope and context, the economic meltdown will make the thirties look like a stroll through the park and the die-off will make the Black Death look like a nose bleed. On a historical time scale, it is all only a heart beat away. That it should be camouflaged by the media-packaged Obama trinket of mass democracy and false hope is only fitting. How else could it possibly be?
To aid the savvy hand-wringers, I would like to offer a quote from Joe Stalin. It seems to be appropriate: “The death of one soldier is a tragedy; the death of one million soldiers is a statistic.” This is the objective perspective as opposed to the subjective twaddle that resides between most ears. The trick is to be a decent and courageous human being, not a statistic.
Re Post-Peak Oil preparation, if there is some action you can take towards crafting your survival, then do it. Fight where you stand, not necessarily “against” anyone or anything, but for yourself. There is only one place to start and that is at the beginning, in the here and the now. Otherwise, one is left shitting in one hand and wishing in the other, waiting to see which piles up first.
However one may understand and relate to a God of their understanding, may God’s speed be with us all. We will need it.
Jenna:
Your "Pirates Through a Different Lens" and "Gangs of America" articles don't have working links to read them.
Hi All
I've been following FTW for years now, and this blog for a wee while too... a big THANK YOU to everyone who's taken an active role!
I'm 38, male, have a wife and 3 kids, and I've lived in the UK for the past 15 years (came here from the US when I was travelling - 23 years old and full of wanderlust).
From a very youn age, around 7, I seemed to have an understanding of life that none of my family or friends had - and boy oh boy was I treated differently because of it (to this day I'm still looked at as being the black sheep of the family...).
Like a lot of people on this blog, I've done what preparing I can for the coming events (my Wife says she'll divorce me if I buy just one more bulk bag of rice or if I store just one more 5 litre bottle of water in the loft (attic)... shhh, don't tell her, but I've recently been squirreling supplies away under the floorboards when she goes to her palates classes (man - she's going to beat me like a rented mule when she finds out;-)
OK, enough of the frivolous introductions and sharing of marital duplicity - let me get down to what I wanted to say...
Have courage!
Todd
PS I needed to keep this short as I have some floorboards to nail back down before my own personal Armageddon ensues;-)
Hi,Mike.Some weeks back you said you didn't think the "elites" were destroying U.S. economy since they were the major beneficiaries.Now you say:"after the planned looting and destruction of the U.S. economy".Why did you change your mind?.
Regarding the collapse,I'm Spanish.Many people on the dole here.1 million more in the last year.Still not rioting,but for how long?,not long.For now peaceful rallies.The press says deppression will be deeper and longer here than in other E.U. countries.Many tile factories where I live shut down and the rest are firing most of the workers.Scary.
Nacho Franch-Spain
FYI, the links don't work...
businessman
those two links should work now. thx
no more paper:
http://www.dtcc.com/leadership/issues/nomorepaper/about/announcements.php
hmmmmm and what happens if systems are, for whatever reason, 'interrupted' ?
what a great way for more $'s to disappear !
His Royal Highness, Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands warns about Peak-Oil!!
More Americans Joining Military as Jobs Dwindle
V(incent)
pleison2 -- I haven't changed my mind at all. I have said consistently that the elites deliberately intiated, timed, and exploited the economic crash. The evidence is overhwleming for this. However, at the same time they also unleashed powers they cannot now fully control; powers that are eating them too.
We now have what, four or five suicides, Bernie Madoff and his victims and some very big elites yet to go down.
As to whether there is a demarcation between existing elites or whether it will be a gander game of musical chairs remains to be seen. The balancing that comes is not a human balancing but a spiritual, metaphysical and universal balancing; beyond the minds and words of men to control.
The dinosaurs are still going to die. The economy was going to crash one way or another. I am just amazed at how greedy, selfish and short-sighted the outgoing administration was in what they did. I am amazed that Congress, the press and the people rolled over for it. The wealth the Bush "base" pocketed was our wealth, wealth we needed and will need to survive.
MCR
A link to Tomgram (this may be better linked to previous, but I'm in a hurry!):
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175022/andy_kroll_will_public_education_be_militarized_
...for minorities especially...help keep 'em out those camps, eh? Yes indeedy, Coach Obama is a VERY competent admintrator
Would we be human, if only goodness and charity existed in this world?
Would we be human, if only cruelty existed in this world?
The point that you made Mike is that BOTH make us human; therefore, a balance is needed if those who live in this world are to be happy.
My question to you folks is this: is or was balance ever possible?
Like Shakespeare once wrote in his comedy Twelfth Night, "Nothing that is so, is so."
Who knows? Maybe the answer is: yes and no - the snake eating its tail.
Bottom line -
We are human - Everything in TWO.
If we were god or whatever you want to call it, everything would be ONE.
Every humans goal: to be GODLIKE.
Hey Sebestian, Keep those quotes comin' - that's great food for thought.
RE: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
Let me get this straight. They're dumping lead, mercury and nuclear waste into the same waters where they're poaching all the big fish, to take back to their cushy first world restaurants...
Holy Cow, it's good to be a vegetarian. For so many reasons.
pstajk, re "My question to you folks is this: is or was balance ever possible?" and "We are human - Everything in TWO."
Of course, I cannot speak for anyone else, but I have stared my monkey in the eyes. He is a simple brute, now silenced and mute, yet very much alive. Yes, love does conquer fear. I am a better man for it, able to assume responsibiity, able to push my own envelope (I really don't give a shit about anyone else's. That is a humble assertion, BTW.)
Speaking of quotes, here's a good acronym for F.E.A.R.: Fuck Everything And Run. =;-D
Re "Hey Sebestian, Keep those quotes comin' - that's great food for thought."
"The hound that has not yet hunted is yet a pup." - Irish proverb
January 20, 2009
And so here we are again, brought right up virtually into view of the flames -- with all due gratitude once again extended to MCR/JO/copvcia for providing us with such an invaluable vantage point.
And also again, no differently than it will always be for me, from where I'm standing I see the situation humankind is heading into NOT being (and ultimately never really having been) so much one of how to 'physically survive' as it has always been of simply 'getting our minds as fully developed and accordingly collectively synchronized' as possible BEFORE whatever it is that invariably is always going to come down the pike and return our bodies to nothing more alive than any other sophisticated ingeniously systematized accumulation of otherwise intrinsically inert accumulation(s) of physical molecules than they ever have been and ever will be.
Like I keep telling you guys, we human beings are very special organisms. Unlike any other species of Earth-dwelling animals, we've been evolved/created to FULLY understand and thereby OPTIMALLY interact with everything that can and does affect our lives when experiencing the condition(s) which is(are) unique to our being physically embodied. As living organisms we are intelligent/sentient spirits living within systemically evolved/developed physiological constructs which our singularly intelligent/sentient selves implement to our purposes whenever and wherever we choose to do so throughoutthe contextual paradigm of our Universe. Our only obstacles to optimally experiencing the immeasurable rewards which this Universe out of which we are produced continuously offers us is our collective ignorance, prejudices, and bigotries.
As for "spiritual masturbation", it's every bit as delightful as physical masturbation. The Universe I live in provides harmless pleasures in infinite abundance to anyone and everyone with the smarts to be here and fully partake of. And to hell with the rest of you if that's where you choose to be.
*******
I sensed from my very first viewing of "Truth and Lies of 9/11" (about 6½ or so yrs ago now) that this remarkable MCR/copvcia fellow (who'd produced the video that had just introduced me to him) and I had the potential of one day joining up to expedite our common objective, which, if I might state it for the both of us, is to make the world a better place for everyone and every other living thing that we can.
As it ever is re interactions of two or more equally sincere, equally well-focused, ambitiously self-informing strong minded intelligent spirits with conceptually identical but perhaps objectively somewhat varying targets -- any potentially shared tool such persons as ourselves might consider forging together, as a team, can only be built via the cooperative and collaborative interplay of all involved parties' egos, senses of empathy, energies, decision-making processes, and words thereof the whole of it. And I know that all of us here at FTW are at least rhetorically in agreement with these points. However, in addition to this so far being the case:
I also personally hold the understanding that all good soldiers who come into this truly hallowed place must enter ultimately naked and equal, knowing that each one of us is always and every time actually a novice at this sort of thing, having nothing more valuable to offer each other than our personal equally human selves. Undoubtedly, each of us at least feels intuitively that we have or must have something important and valuable --something at least simple and plain if not enormously complex and magnificent -- to place upon this hallowed place's tool-maker's table, where all of us can see what each of us brings and thereof be considered for what it/they and we are. Consequently, in this genuinely special place I look to see the simplest of us all being the greatest and the greatest the most humble, and therefore expect to find all of us here ideally equally so-disposed.
Here we are given to see and know that what we all most truly want and need to place on the smithy's table must be something we are able to equally understand, share, use, and equally benefit ourselves therefrom. And thus, as such, what we each bring into the room with us is ultimately and necessarily the exact same thing. But -- each of us also brings into the room within our personal selves one truly Universal Potential Adversary, which adversary is able to subvert any hypothetically collective/singular objective we might otherwise equally understand, share, use, and thereby equally benefit ourselves therefrom. And that adversary is ANY EGO which would attempt to supplant true democratic team work with ANY form of ostensibly shared human undertaking which has in its foundation ANY degree of essentially only personally self-serving parochial objective. Be assured, such human ventures as those which are infected with any exclusively only personal motive(s) will never progress humankind beyond where humankind has right up till now always been.
And so it is from consideration of these things that RanD has come here to place on this tool maker smithy's table exclusively the Universal Common Good. Nothing simpler, nothing greater, nothing less nor other than that. In other words: we are here just be good to and for one another.
*******
From studying and weighing all media presentations -- from the glorious chirpings of woodland societies of spring peepers to our uniquely human blogosphere chatterings and all the rest of our Universe's consummate transmissions, each iota of which such transmissions comes variously yet also ever directly into the human estate, I realize that what I place upon the table to help provide entrance into humankind's future comes from a consciousness paradigm not yet commonly and well studied, thus not fully understood, nor thus capable of being accepted by all. As it nonetheless is, one day soon all of this which is being spoken of here will be commonly known, but only after a prerequisite number of our species' members have finally chosen to transcend the ignorance and mindless violence laden worlds we've been creating right up till now virtually since day one of our species' advent on this utterly wonderful planet Earth.
Moreover, therefore: every, any, and all unquestionably awful things that are taking place throughout the human condition these days, and all the truly awful things that are in front of us yet to be seen and experienced -- all of which include consequences produced of strictly human behaviors as well as entirely non-human origins -- are but harbingers of the progressively nearing future of our current Universe's evolving Itself, finally, into Its grandest stage of being since the moment It physically brought Itself into existence those several billions of yrs ago.
*******
And so it is, having stated all this most essential information we've been given to disseminate -- on exclusively this MCR/JO/copvcia/FTW blogspot -- RanD is now thanking all of you for the fact of your having personally contributed yourselves, in your own words, to the making of these words that you have just finished reading here.
Much love and all possible good fortune to us all, forever; sincerely,
RanD
Mike and Jenna--
We need a "Suze Ortman" of peak oil/crash preparedness.
FOR EXAMPLE
Hi, I'm a 40 year old who has $40,000 in student loans, and have a degree in Scottish Music History. I've been thinking I need to get my Massage Therapist Certification, but will that make money or be something that I can use to barter?
Also, can you grow food in rocks? I see the Israeli's doing it, and just wondered how that works...and will that work on concrete? Right now I'm thinking that I can grow alfalfa sprouts in Mason jars and barter those...
P.S. As advised, I am stocking up on bullion (Especially beef)
Any advice is appreciated!
Just some humor, but a "Preparedness Adviser" would be great. (Of course, the "Financial Advisers" of the past were not that great...).
In the end, we all have to use our senses, make our best bets, and keep a reserve for Plan B (or plan C) in case those bets prove wrong for some reason
Is this some kind of joke?
Bush Pardons Osama bin Laden
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-rees/breaking-bush-pardons-osa_b_159272.html
I never believed binLaden was the mastermind of 9/11. He was the designated boogeyman and is probably alive and well somewhere not in a cave.
If there's one gift I can be thankful for around George Bush having been our President, and I really have to search hard and wide to find this one gift...it's that he made it so easy for me to understand how much we've been manipulated all these years by the media and the powers that be who really control the media. He was so incongruent in his presentation skills, and his attitude seemed to be one of "I'm sticking it to you, and I know you know I'm sticking it to you. But I really don't care because there's not a damn thing you can do to stop me."
The growth of the Internet during the Bush Presidency gave us access to unparalleled alternate sources for news, including this very Blog. Between these sources and Bush's transparency, making it easier to see what he was really up to, I'm a completely changed individual in terms of my knowledge of how our media really operates, how politics and business are really conducted within our country, how our financial system really operates, and the real truth around our history as a nation. And had our President been a smoother, more polished speaker over these past eight years, I might not have recognized that there was an entirely different layer of truth that needed to be discovered by me.
Businessman:
Me too! Until Empire got so gawdawful that it couldn't be ignored, I assumed it had a good side that would eventually prevail. After 20 years abroad, I returned to the West Coast to find my country shattered, stripped and abased.
Because of this, and because of the FTW family, I have seen the connections. I know that the recent Bush administration was not an anomoly, but a reductio ad absurdum. By taking it right over the top, W. managed to force my eyes open.
Guess we can thank him for that, eh?
Bless you for pointing that out!
What a great article about the pirates, Jenna!
Thanks.
I hear ya on that one, eyeballs!
As Don Henley once said in his song, "My Thanksgiving":
"Sometimes you get your best light from a burning bridge."
Global Energy War: Washington's New Kissinger's African Plans
by Rick Rozoff
(Sunday, January 25, 2009)
"The West, the US in the first instance, is waging an unparalleled drive to retain and expand what military, political and economic domination and monopolies it has wrested from the rest of the world over the past five centuries, and control of the globe’s energy resources and their transportation is a vital component of that reckless campaign."
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/58994
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