Radio, Radio
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don't give you any choice
'cause they think that it's treason - Elvis Costello
An overdue post is in the works, but at least I've finally refreshed the playlist for RI radio. Some of the additions may be familiar, like Thom York's Harrowdown Hill and Eminem's Public Enemy Number 1, but most will likely be new, such as Paul Metsa's Jack Ruby, T Hallenbeck's Hymn to the Mothman and the Conspiracy Cantata of Yannis Kyriakides.
I hope you enjoy, if that's the right word, though I'm almost certain it's not. Some of the songs and my selection of them are meant to provoke thought, and not necessarily pleasure. But provocative thought has its peculiar rewards.
Please consider this an open thread, and I'll see you soon.
posted by Jeff Wells at 12/06/2006 03:37:00 AM
51 Comments:
Shouldn't we be hearing back from them by now? Radio waves have been going out into Space for quite some time, and considering they travel at (almost) the speed of gravity, or is that the speed of light, (I get confused), something should have recognised our "distress signal" and come to the rescue no?
Anonymous One,Eric that comment sends me back to the blog,FSHOD and the entry-The Frequency Resonant.Do you think someone out there will pick up the planets distress signal in time to save us,haha?What kind of signal are they sending with the pick for UN ambassador,I think they are telling us it's over folks,later.
Jeff,
check out 'Seein Thangs' by DJ Shadow.
Substance over style
Touches on a number of issues of regular discussion around here
Regards
Could Poppy Bush's uncontrollable sobbing have anything to do with W's fate? Has the decision been made? Has Senior decided to sacrifice his son? Is there an assassination in the offing? It's about that time, isn't it?
As much as I dislike Bush, I don't wish violent, or otherwise, death on anyone, but I'm not them, am I?
Well Eric...
Any "distress", I'm afraid, just like any "evil" that might cause it, is always in the eye (or maybe even in the ear too, in this case) of the beholder.
Now our splendid little incubator of a world couldn't be any further away from any of the more likely places to support some genuinely intelligent or advanced lifeforms and still be in this galaxy...hmmm?
So we must obviously answer the riddle of both time and space to sufficiently enlarge our own consciousness enough to make the necessary contact with their's, provided that they in fact exist. There is no other option if we truly wish to find out.
To simply say "hello" with a nice big smile and certainly not some desperate and disturbed plea for "help".
We are no doubt yet to be "born" in their terms, to register on their awareness in a way that would make such a contact worthwhile and us worthy of their notice if any such beings actually existed.
We are all, of course the "babies" here, for good, bad or otherwise who have been given this altogether remarkable opportunity to discover for ourselves whatever our potentials might be, not to mention all the errors of the virtually unlimited and unrestricted ways we've been granted to try and discover whatever they are.
Those two simply go hand in hand. In all honesty, what more could we possibly ask for that wouldn't be tantamount to conceding that we've utterly failed to become the completely self-determined species we've had every concievable chance and opportunity to be and are prepared to beg for some form of mercy or clemency we clearly do not deserve from some higher authority even if one existed?
There's certainly nothing missing in either our own quite sophisticated design nor that of our natural environment.
Our planet has always had far more potential and an entirely natural inclination to be a veritable paradise for us were it not for our own childish ignorance, runaway fears, and utter lack of responsibilty for our own stupid actions.
That we are intelligent enough to know and recognise that but not take the necessary steps to correct it is no one's fault but our own.
We live and die by virtue of our our own choices in this matter as well as whatever we choose to make of what lies in between.
If we choose to destroy the planet that supports us and suffer extinction through the consequences of our own willfull actions why should any other beings, regardless of how intelligent or compassionate they might be see any potential at all for interceding?
What exactly would be the point in trying to save us from ourselves?
Now we are rapidly approaching a point where we must finally come to terms with what we are and make the necessary changes and adjustments or what we are foolishly allowing ourselves to be is going to come to no uncertain terms with us.
No one else can make that determination for us or extend our self-imposed deadline for doing it to emphasize the absolute and utter importance of that very question.
If we do not truly want a reprieve for any other other reason than to just keep right on doing what we've been ignorantly, fearfully and irresponsibly doing all along then none can or will be forthcoming.
The "reality" of our situation is not only precisely what we ourselves have made of it, it is also beyond any other power than our own to change or correct it for that very basic reason.
"Free will" always exists just as every possible and potential outcome stemming from it is also known and already existent.
We are quite free to unwrap and unfold any potion of that more immense reality for our own use, edification, and enlightenment just as we have unwrapped and unfolded the somewhat daunting predicament we are currently living with.
The sooner we begin to accept and understand the challenges that responsibility places upon us NOW, this very instant, and every instant that is NOW, the sooner we can dispense with this suicidal melodrama that we are quite simply sleepwalking into.
It's time to wake up and smell the coffee, not to mention the roses!
Violent Death will always be a constant and the future holds more of it.We have experienced surges and peaks in the past but I fear the speed/intensity of the current manifestation.
Why is rigorousintuition.ca down?
Sounder mentioned in the Ruppert thread that Ruppert was an example of what bad thinking will get you. How does this apply in Bush Senior's case? He seems to be living a long and rewarding life. The same held true for Reagan, while he was conscious, and a multitude of other dastardly men and women of influence. Why doesn't ehir bad thinking affect them the way Ruppert's bad thinking affected him?
"Why is rigorousintuition.ca down?"
It loads okay for me.
Other song suggestions for RI Radio:
Hanger 18 by Megadeth
2 Minutes 2 Midnight by Iron Maiden
6 Days by Cloud Cult
In the News by Kris Kristofferon
Operation Mindcrime I and II (the whole albums) by Queensryche
anything by Anti-Flag
anything by Michael Franti & Spearhead
anything by Muse (esp. last 2 albums. Exo-Politics for sure)
"Makeshift Patriot" by Sage Francis.
Compliments to the bogger.
"Makeshift Patriot" by Sage Francis.
Compliments to the blogger.
a couple quick links. first one tells of the administration's and Congress' push to legalize totalitarian means in the latest defense reauthorization bill for '08:
http://public.cq.com/public/20061201_homeland.html
second is an interesting speech given by Bill Moyers to students at West Point:
http://www.tompaine.com/print/message_to_west_point.php
Siverfox, that was another wonderful post. Keep them coming.
An absolute MUST to check out: "Succexy" by Metric from their album, "Old World Underground, Where are you now?" !!!
"All we do is talk, sit, switch screen as the homeland plans enemies...."
I realized after writing the ‘bad thinking’ comment that it may be taken in an inflammatory or insulting way. This was my own bad thinking.
To answer Marsha’s question, none the less, I think that people that repress their cognitive dissonance do not set up their sub-conscious element to create situations that illustrate the nature of their dissonance.
The ill health more likely comes from an effort to deal with ones cognitive dissonance. I am reminded of the characterization of cancer as the nun’s disease at one time. So you can repress cognitive dissonance and be healthy, while being open to dealing with dissonance may produce ill health as an internal technique that may shock the psyche into adopting different habits. The end, unfortunately is usually the adoption of some novel ‘belief’ system whereby the dissonance can be relegated to ones (societies) unconsciousness again. Oh well. Having a framework is still required to deal with the dissonance.
Love Me, I'm a Liberal (Phil Ochs)
Nice piece, SilverFox.
I hope you don't mind,but I mirrored it here:
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=57&
Ex-Agent: CIA Seed Money Helped Launch Google
Robert David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer and a former clandestine services case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, is the CEO of OSS.net.
He is an ex-CIA agent who has gone further than ever before in detailing Google's relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, claiming sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground--and naming for the first time Google's CIA point man.
Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Steele elaborated....
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2006/061206seedmoney.htm
"I also think it's very very wrong of Google to have this relationship," cautioned Steele. The former agent went further than before in identifying by name Google's liaison at the CIA. "Let me say very explicitly - their contact at the CIA is named Dr. Rick Steinheiser, he's in the Office of Research and Development," said Steele.
Steele highlighted Google's blatant censorship policies whereby press releases put out by credible organizations that are critical of Dick Cheney and other administration members don't make it to Google News even though they are carried by PR Newswire.
We have repeatedly highlighted past examples of censorship on behalf of Google, including their blacklisting of a mainstream news website that was mildly critical of China, and also the deliberate stifling and manipulation of Alex Jones' Terror Storm film ranking on Google Video. Google was also caught red-handed attempting to bury the Charlie Sheen 9/11 story at the height of its notoriety.
Saying Google had become "too big for itself," Steele opined that Google was "long overdue for a public audit. One of the problems with privatized power is that it's not subject to public audit," said Steele, arguing that groups should rally to "put Google out of business unless they're willing to go the open source software route."
Bless the beasts and the whistleblowers.
Certainly explains
- Google buying up alternative You Tube recently
- Google's 35 year cookie surveillance on who searches for what
- Google's attempt to archive all private email (gmail.com free accounts to make streamlining surveillance more readily done)
- Google's desire to conscript your computer's internal microphones, if you have then, and activate them without your knowledge (mentioned in the article).
Use Scroogle.org to search instead!
Strips out identifiers...
Ri.ca loaded fine for me too. I actually googled it and it worked.
I guess in cyber space that makes you famous!
Silverfox,
Are you kidding?! We're free to do what we want, to set up either utopia or dystopia as we see fit, and always have been? In what society do you live? When has there ever, even for a short time, been a government that allowed its citizenry to decide what enlightened policy decisions to enact?
So, if I present an argument for sustainable architecture, economics, education, etc, etc, the goddamned elites and their military/industrial power structure are just going to let us implement it, and to hell with their bottom line, to hell with their age-old economies of scarcity and political control and organized terror-tyranny?
You do realize that your argument is the classic "it's all our fault; we just can't overcome the baseness of our nature" meme that is constantly inserted by the owners into any discussion of how to change the world, don't you?
Silverfox, if it's true that they wouldn't let even one socialist experiment in the history of the world either succeed or fail on its own, without sabotaging, subverting, co-opting, invading, or otherwise attacking any country that had the audacity to set up a society where the common man and his needs were paramount, as opposed to those of the ruling classes (and it is true, my friend, it is true), then what makes you think we are able to do any such thing which you portray as being as simple as making up our minds?
Why is it that, despite the multi-generational propaganda against such things, 3/4ths of the American public favor universal health care and education, environmental protection and intervention, and massive investment in alternative energy development? Better yet, why we don't have these things? We do know what we want--we are simply not being allowed to do it, just as it's always been.
But sure, Silverfox, blame our problems on "our own childish ignorance, runaway fears, and utter lack of responsibilty for our own stupid actions." I just knew it was my fault that the biosphere is collapsing. If only I had voted for John Kerry, gosh, we'd be drinking that nectar and supping that ambrosia right now, wouldn't we?
Silverfox, I've enjoyed a great many of your posts, and you write very well. However, that was either the most intellectually dishonest piece of crap I've ever read, or you've got some vested interest in the vested interests who make damned certain that the only free will that we have is found in sanctimonious platitudes like this.
My regards to those who've "unwrapped and unfolded the somewhat daunting predicament we are currently living with."
IC,
I would say your "they'll never let us change it" critique above maliciously neuters the potential for positive change and is more harmful by far than what Silverfox had to say.
Until a majority of us wake up and notice the chains around their necks, I would not consider the match to have even begun.
We still have some time to get them, but the time is running out.
Thanks, Kowlooney
IC said;
"We do know what we want--we are simply not being allowed to do it, just as it's always been."
We may know what we want, but we definitely have not found the proper means to get it. When we find the proper means we will also find that what we want is different than what we thought we wanted.
As to what is allowed? We all are conditioned from birth to express ourselves through communal psychical conditioning systems. We choose to limit our expressions because we do not like others thinking of us as being crazy.
I jump that river (unconsciousness) not by noticing the chains, too simple; but by examining the composition of said chains in detail so as to break them.
For me, the chains are forged with material that confers authority to an elite by accepting the foundational assumption that being precedes consciousness. Is society more likely to prosper with all people encouraged to develop their thinking, or with thinking restricted to an approved expert class? (with most of their pretences based on false assumptions).
Thanks- silverfox, IC, and the anon google tipster
Anonymous One,I have noticed lately that folks are completly tuning out.Just interject the mention of anything about 9-11 and you might be thought a nut,the mind slides that have been inserted by our friends out there are working like a charm.There is a cloud that has decended on"Merica"that is being minipulated by something stronger than we can even imagine.This next step in evoloution is going to be a big one,make sure to get a pair of Piper sunglasses for the trippen on your HD tv,later.
Too ethereal?
I want to be more straightforward; here's another attempt.
Repress your dissonance and it becomes expressed through unconscious societal dysfunction, (yet individual health is maintained).
Recognize the dissonance and bring on stress, tension, and perhaps ill health.
Resolve the dissonance by creating a framework that can account for greater varieties of experiences and thereby connect more positively and authentically to reality, increasing chances for healthy expressions.
Still to ethereal? I can only keep trying.
IC said what I would have said:
"You do realize that your argument is the classic "it's all our fault; we just can't overcome the baseness of our nature" meme that is constantly inserted by the owners into any discussion of how to change the world, don't you? Silverfox, if it's true that they wouldn't let even one socialist experiment in the history of the world either succeed or fail on its own, without sabotaging, subverting, co-opting, invading, or otherwise attacking any country that had the audacity to set up a society where the common man and his needs were paramount,..."
Japan actually almost got it by the mid 1450s-1550s. It scared the residual shogunate elites of the Muromachi bakufu so much that no one was listening to them, they (to cut a long story short) militarily conquered the whole thing as best they could to reestablish a clientelistic elite run group and a broken cowering people. Took them over 50 years to reorient: Tokugawa became a warrior caste society where samurai (small % of society) had right to kill anyone else--anywhere they wanted for any purpose all the time--where powerful merchants fit right in as their friends almost immediately... (Didn't help that European powers were attempting to gain footholds in the 1500s there either--providing huge firepower unseen before in Japan to accomplish it.)
In the United States, a fascinating take on a little known though very central British hierarchical inbred fifth column conspiring against the American colonial Revolution (and its own in turn radical anti-colonialism stance, its neutrality and friendship to all republics, etc.) as they aimed to either destroy it or later after repeated failures to turn it into an American imperial version of the British empire instead.
The book is Anton Chaitkin's Treason in America. Quite a head spinning book. Only flaw I see in it is the author is blinded to attempting to paint national consolidation of the economy as entirely good while external infiltration the other (more obviously bad).
Anton ignores that sometimes they were the same people. Why he does that makes me really suspicious of the whole one-sided approach to many nationalist things he is very pro-, like central banking for instance. Though it's hard to deny that the people working against nationalist policies are exactly as he claims.
Besides that major caveat, for that one sided approach of researching the international infiltration wing of the British Empire (endlessly working on whittling down and de-revolutionizing the United States), Anton follows the actual people and intergenerational treasonous families involved, event after event, inbred marriage after inbred marriage, treason by father followed by treason by son or son-in-law, crusty old uncle teaching fresh young nephew, etc.
Written in the typical EIR screed turned up full volume (which is always entertaining to me, though turns some off), any critique of style is absolved and forgiven by the priceless, detailed parapolitical antics recounted.
It's major historical rewrite of the United States as always in the throws of being subverted by British loyalists or the international drug lords (U.S. domestic and British/international), who were hideously afraid and full of hate for even a thin American democratic experiment.
It reminds me of one of the morals that William Blum drew from his exhaustive book Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II: 'it's hardly required to entirely destroy a country that institutes an alternative or more democratic and representative framework of political economy--it's enough to make it look like a basket case to where it appears to the surface viewer to be discrediting itself, when a lot of sabotaging effort went into making it such a basket case.'
Though it would ruin Chaitkin's clear 'evil internationlists versus good nationalists' perspective, read it with the book The Real Lincoln. Same with our Putin versus West theme previously: just because there is a clear bad guy, fails to mean that who they are fighting is going to be good.
Another comment from above struck me as wrong, and to inform more about how wrong it is, I quote a poll I have seen:
Anonymous One,I have noticed lately that folks are completly tuning out.Just interject the mention of anything about 9-11 and you might be thought a nut,...
Actually, no, I have found the opposite in my corner of the world. Only 16% will think you are a nut now, unless you have lots of nuts in your area of course....
Only 16% Think Government Telling the Truth about 9/11
( Home » Only 16% Think... )
Submitted by GeorgeWashington on Sat, 10/14/2006 - 1:16pm.
poll
According to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, only 16% of Americans think the government is telling the truth about 9/11:
"Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?
Telling the truth 16%
Hiding something 53%
Mostly lying 28%
Not sure 3%"
The 16% are probably a waste of energy: if they still believe the official story, then they are unlikely to change their minds based on facts. (If you have the patience to never give up, then more power to you).
The 28% who say "mostly lying" are probably already 9/11 truthers. They may, however, simply believe that the government LET 9/11 happen on purpose, without understanding that 9/11 could not have succeeded unless elements within the government had actively ASSISTED in the attacks. So you might want to discuss some of the facts regarding the war games and the Mineta testimony, for example.
The 3% who are not sure are certainly worth reaching out to.
But I would argue that the 53% who responded that the government is "hiding something" are the best use of our time. These folks already have a little knowledge or a gut feeling that the government is hiding something, but haven't learned enough facts to understand that 9/11 was an inside job. With a little education, they will understand that what the government is hiding is that it was complicit in the crime of the century, the biggest false flag attack in history.
And this is the majority of Americans, a worthwhile group to speak with. So spending time giving the facts to someone who understands that the government is hiding something is a very effective investment.
Addressing some of the basic facts proving that the government knew of and let the attacks succeed, or the many high-level people questioning 9/11 or saying building 7 was brought down by controlled demolition might be good places to start.
The poll also suggests that it is worth starting out conversations about 9/11 by asking the same sort of question asked by the poll. That way, you can quickly identify whether someone falls into the "hiding something", "telling the truth", or "mostly lying" categories.
Note: the full text of the poll question was "When it comes to what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?"
http://911blogger.com/node/3720
ONLY 16% ARE DELUDED ANYMORE ABOUT 9-11! Quite an accomplishment...
So I don't think it's avoidance: it might be more of an uncomfortable embarrassment or silence as they recount how hubristically deluded they had been in the past.
Now that a huge majority--even in the U.S.--know Bush is basically a traitor along with a great portion of the U.S. military and intelligence services, I'm sure most are wondering more along the lines of "well, should I get excited or upset when obviously the traitors are in control?"
If so many know the official story (there never was one! it kept adapting and parrying! sort of like the endless changed purposes of invasion of Iraq) is entirely a lie, though people I feel are unsure how much they want to know about what really went on.
The only nuts clearly gathering are inside fences on the White House lawn, hiding in Congress ignoring these numbers, hiding behind the curtains and all their surveillance equipment--watching their lies become "totally inoperative"...
Speaking of Nixon, if you've never seen it watch Nixon's resignation speech:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/richardnixonresignationspeech.html
What a patronizing speech. American rhetoric indeed.
Everything Nixon said was conditions of his resignation happened long ago for Baby Bush, though Bush is just so much a psychopath he blames everyone else.
And it was Prescott Bush, Poppy Bush's father, who hired and created Nixon....
If anyone has a week to kill, and video editing expertise, craft a Bush resignation speech using the same words.
No one is ever ever ever going to believe the U.S. Empire in anything anymore, unless it comes clean and admits its orchestrating global terrorism for fun and profit.
Since only around 16% of the public will be shocked in the U.S., it's not going to be that much of a surprise to anyone to crack this nut a bit wider and get back to the Federal Reserve/IRS starting the true police state in the U.S. back in 1913. If you hate going back that far, just learn that Poppy Bush offed Kennedy. That might be enough to share.
In other polls, the rest of the world reached that nadir of trust for Bush lies about 9-11 several years ago in many countries.
Anton's book many help them to wake up--so they can start dreaming something useful.
something should have recognised our "distress signal" and come to the rescue no?
Or at least they'll come to help Lucy perform at Ricky's club.
So you better do what you've been told:
You better listen to Jeff's radio
Radio Radio
I prefer Mexican Radio.
IC,
I would say your "they'll never let us change it" critique above maliciously neuters the potential for positive change.
Anonymous,
That wasn’t my intent; I am actually a very strongly optimistic person. I do believe in the “potential for positive change”—I just don’t think we’re going to get there by pretending that there are no external obstacles, no system set up and run by those who profit (enormously!) from the status quo. “Know your enemy” does not mean cower in abject fear at his feet. In fact, the best schemes I’ve seen for healing the world start by acknowledging what’s wrong with it (including the manipulation of the media, the educational system, and the political sphere by the ubiquitous PTB), and then using that knowledge as a plan of attack.
A quick example of this is Paul Hawkens’ Natural Capital group, which I’ve many times linked here. Their plan is to make capitalism work for the ethical restoration of man as steward of nature by using the very structures which are now used as instruments of man’s enslavement and the earth’s degradation.
Another world-changing strategy which is based on acknowledging and exploiting the current exploitative paradigm is The Case for Business Philanthropy As Functional World Federation. An excerpt:
The concept of Nation States no longer satisfies the growing dynamics of a global information society. The culture and characteristics of a particular region can be maintained, but the leaders of all regions must cooperate with a legitimate world federation in the generation and distribution of resources and information unique to their geography. Military spending must be reduced and channeled into positive social programs. Global allocation models (software) will be a part of this system. This will not be communism, but intelligent supply and demand based on a bid system and fair trade. The fundamental unit of all models should be a person, and each person shall have the same rights and responsibilities. (The rest is worth reading, too.)
All of these approaches to the problem begin by acknowledging that the greatest obstacle to change is not the inadequacy of human nature, but rather the external conditions set up, maintained, and monitored by the bad guys, the owners. This is not to say that gazing at the mesmerizing, will-sapping spectre of dystopia (instead of focusing on solutions) is a good idea. Tolkien was one of the first to posit the notion that contemplating evil too closely or too long actually strengthened that evil, as in the famous scene where Pippin starts to lose his mind to the palantir (as well as Tolkien's intense dislike for the fiction of C.S. Lewis). For more on that topic, look back at this thread from August 9, 2006 (The Predator Class (Part One). Here’s a sample of what we discussed that day:
starroute said...
These folks were the power structure in the town,they could make things happen any time they wanted to
That might be the crucial statement in all of this.
No conspiracies here...just power structures that make things happen. Discretely, in private, by words being dropped among powerful people.
Powerful people who become all the more powerful through their involvement in power structures with other powerful people.
And the power structures themselves, held together by mechanisms older than the human species itself. Mechanisms strong enough to get a bunch of alpha males working together instead of trying to eliminate one another as rivals.
Sex for one -- marriage of the top males to each other's sisters and daughters. Or direct male-to-male sexual relationships -- or a combination of both.
Mutual blackmail for another. I more and more get the impression that in the CIA, for example, there's been a sense that you can't really trust somebody unless you can blackmail them. (The CIA has clearly always functioned as a power structure in this sense and not as an objective government bureaucracy.)
Not that run-of-the-mill blackmail isn't still useful for underlings -- or politicians. But the real thrill -- the quasi-sexual excitement -- comes from blackmail among equals.
And a step yet beyond that is the ultimate power of shared indiscretions. The mechanism of guilt, the rush of getting away with something forbidden, combined with the bond formed with those few from whom you don't have to hide your guilty secrets.
Democracy has been, as much as anything else, an attempt to break the old, old hold of the power structures by depersonalizing government. But it seems to be a never-ending battle. Get rid of the old aristocracies, and you find yourself fighting Tammany Hall, or the Mafia, or the CIA.
I guess the real question is when human beings will get rational enough for public systems of governance to permanently outweigh the old, private power structures. Until then, it's going to continue to be an uphill struggle.
So, yeah. It is an uphill struggle, but it’s not impossible (which assessment makes the post from Silverfox that I find so objectionable even more perplexing.) Silverfox, how do you reconcile this new “change is easy, ‘cuz all we have to do is want it, but we don't, so it's all our fault” position with what you wrote less than two weeks ago:
The only rule that matters in our so-called modern life is "There's no getting out it if you can't buy your way out of it." and all the major corporations have finally managed buy their way out with our hard earned money and taxes and left us permanently stuck with all their accumulating bills to add to our own and keep us forever trapped right where they want us.(from November 27, 2006, Floating in a Most Peculiar Way)
On the other extreme is the kind of optimism which is far more nebulous, based as it is on assumptions about trends which don’t require any effort to “steer” on our part at all, such as Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity. Another sunny picture that is more down to earth than Kurzweil’s comes from something I found over at Big Gav’s amazing site:
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Dave Roberts at Grist has an excellent interview with “fund manager and former corporate buyout specialist” Travis Bradford on his book Solar Revolution.
question: Your book's central claim is pretty bold.
answer: Thanks for recognizing that.
It's not just that we're moving toward alternatives, it's that we're moving toward distributed [power generation] as well. If both of those are true, solar is the only viable option.
Solar is different from other energy technologies in that it delivers energy at the point of use, directly to the end user. That allows it to circumvent the entire supply chain. It's not another option for a utility, it's a competitor to a utility -- the first time utilities have really had a competitor.
The best way to describe it is with an anecdote about cell phones. We used to have these monopoly telephone infrastructure players. They controlled everything, and they had all the processing power at central switching stations. You had these dummy terminals that you just picked up; you had a connection, but no brains. All the brains were in the center of the network. And then these cell-phone producers came along and, in the Telecommunications Act of '96, were given access to the telephone grid. They began to go completely around the supply chain and offer competing services to the same customers, wireless and easier. The telephone utilities ... first they ignored it, then they tried to fight it legislatively, and when they lost that they tried to fight it economically. Eventually they just decided, screw it, we're going to buy them. Today those are the most profitable parts of their business. That's the transformation.
This also happened in computers. We went from large, centralized mainframes with dummy terminals to a distributed hybrid architecture.
Solar is slowly going to begin to unwind the existing utility economics, to the point where utilities decide they have to get in or they risk losing their core business -- exactly the transformations we've lived through in the last 20 years.
The solar revolution does not require new breakthroughs in technology. You could do it with the technology we have, scaling it up and learning how to do it incrementally better every year -- which is what naturally happens with scale.
question: Solar is mainly used for electricity, which represents just over a third of energy use. How do you account for transportation fuels?
answer: We'll never solve the problem of transportation until we reconnect the transportation and electricity infrastructures. There's not enough liquid fuels.
I'm not a big fan of biofuels -- on close examination their environmental impact is wretched. What it does is export part of our energy price for transportation through the grocery store, right? We end up subsidizing the cost of our transportation infrastructure in the price of food stocks. Biofuels will solve some problems, but at the end of the day there's not enough land in the entire Mississippi River Valley to meet our transportation needs. And then where would we get food from? There's cellulosic, but that's only another 10 percent.
There are real capacity constraints in any transportation-fuel option until we reconnect it with the electricity infrastructure. You do that either with plug-in hybrids or with electrolyzed hydrogen. My guess is that batteries will be better for transportation purposes, and electrolyzed hydrogen for stationary applications, because fuel cells on site are much easier to make than fuel cells with the thrust needed in automobiles.
Other than industrial processes, we use thermal applications in heating and hot water. There are electric analogs to both of them. We can have electric hot water heaters just as easily as gas hot water heaters. We can have electric home heating. Historically it was believed that thermal applications were about a third the price of electricity-based heating applications, but that was based on $2 per thousand cubic-foot natural gas and whatever the prevailing price of electricity was. These have come a whole lot more in parity, and in a lot of places in the world, electric heat's the way they go.
Everything has to reconnect. The infrastructures that separated -- first at the beginning of the century, and again in the middle of the century for natural-gas infrastructure -- have to reconnect. And we'll need a lot more electricity to drive that.
question: A lot more. What do you do about coal?
answer: Coal is the enemy of the human race.
question: There's my pull quote. Do you think solar's going to beat coal?
answer: Solar's going to change the electricity infrastructure in a way that will make coal unnecessary. This distributed architecture is going to get to the point where wind and geothermal, where available, take over a lot of the baseload needs; solar will meet a lot of the peak needs, and some of the base needs during the day. The combination of these portfolios will make coal irrelevant. Wind and thermal are nearly as cheap as coal, if not cheaper, and coal still enjoys tremendous subsidies. Under certain circumstances nuclear power would be OK, but I highly doubt those circumstances can be met.
Solar is a universal system available inversely with the wealth of the nation. The richest countries have less and the poorest countries have more.
question: It's frequently said that the U.S. is falling behind in 21st-century energy industries. Is it true?
answer: I often claim that we are in danger of trading our addiction to Middle Eastern oil and Russian natural gas for an addiction to Chinese polysilicon and solar cells. That is a risk.
But if you look at where the materials come from for the solar industry today, while a lot of the cells are made in Germany and Japan and a few in China, a majority of the silicon they use comes from the United States. We're shipping them the feed stocks, and we're making a tremendous amount of money doing it. That's where all the profit is in the supply chain right now, because of the shortage.
The U.S. has lost the glamorous parts of the supply chain. But the profitable and the potentially path-breaking parts like thin-film solar are still here. If we don't get in the game, those will go away, too. We are at risk of losing those, but right now we actually have a pretty strong position, at least in solar.
question: Are you a "crash and contraction are inevitable" environmentalist or an Amory Lovins-style techno-optimist?
answer: I am definitely in the latter family. The way I characterize those two schools of thought are the defense school and the offense school. The defense school is filling the sandbags -- they think we have passed the point of no return, so their strategies to cope are defense-based strategies. My deepest concern is that the defense crowd is right. But I'm not ready to play defense yet.
If we're going to solve the problem, the solar revolution is a necessary and significant component of the solution.
question: Will the decentralization of power production be accompanied by a decentralization of political power?
answer: Solar power is empowering. All things being equal, people like to control the resources upon which they rely. That's why I spend time thinking about solar technologies rather than centralized, easily controlled technologies. At the end of the day, sustainability includes distributed power and democratization.
Now, if that isn’t encouraging, I don’t know what is. For more bright visions of change, empowerment, etc (without a trace of that reprehensible proletariat-killing-itself meme), here’s another link on the ripple effect of that sea change (once the wave finally gets moving...)
Finally, sounder, this one’s for you, also from Big Gav’s world, (December 05, 2006, a-is-for-atom-r-is-for-resource-war):
Dave Pollard has a review of Jeff Vail's book "A Theory Of Power" (which hopefully most of you have read by now - Jeff himself has a post today called "Tort: The Once And Future King"). Jeff Vail's short, free online book A Theory of Power begins with a series of provocative theses:
* The best representation of our world, of what 'is', is not matter, but the connections between matter.
* These connections define 'power-relationships' -- the ability of one entity to influence the action of another.
* The 'law' of evolution can therefore be restated as: if new patterns of forces can survive their impacts with one another, if they tend to hold together rather than tear apart, they then represent a stable collection of power-relationships which survive, self-replicate, and mutate into further new patterns which are in turn subject to the same law.
* This law applies to physical (matter), biological (gene) and cultural (meme) patterns; all matter and life and consciousness, and their evolution, are 'creatures' of their/our material, genetic and cultural constituents, created for the perpetuation of these patterns and sustained through their stable power-relationships.
* Because of the evolutionary success of memes (due to their ability to adapt and change much more quickly and successfully than genes), culture has come to play an increasingly dominant role in our planet's power-relationships.
* Most significantly, the advent of agriculture, which was provoked by climate change (the ice ages) brought about a necessary power shift from the individual to the group in the interest of memes' survival, to the point the individual became largely enslaved to the culture, and the survival of the civilization culture now outweighs in importance the survival of any of its members or communities.
* A consequence of that has been the advent of the codependent cultural constructs of market and state, and, as agriculture has enabled exponential growth in population and created new scarcities, egalitarian societies of abundance have given way to hierarchical societies of managed scarcity.
* This hierarchy has been further entrenched with the cultural evolution of technologies that enable even greater self-perpetuation of the memes that gave rise to it, and have led to the 'efficient' subjugation of the human individual to technology -- that's the power-relationship that most supports the survival and stasis of the culture, and under it even those at the top of the hierarchy become slave-hosts to the memes and culture.
* These memes and culture can now self-perpetuate and thrive more effectively with technology and the artificial constructs of market and globalizations than they could with inefficient and unreliable human hosts, so technology growth is now even outstripping human growth, to the point that humans are becoming commodities and could even become redundant.
* So: if we are now becoming slaves to the machine-powered perpetuation of memes that are outgrowing their need for us (to the point that although catastrophic global warming and human extinction now seem inevitable, this is not something our meme-culture 'cares' about) can we, the human slaves, thanks to the genetic and memetic evolution of self-awareness, 'liberate' ourselves and defeat the meme-culture before it destroys us? In other words, can we consciously, collectively take control for the first time over power-relationships, and establish new power-relationships that put the genetic survival of the human race (and, hopefully, the survival of all other life on Earth on which that genetic survival depends) ahead of the reckless survival of the Frankenstein 'civilization' culture we have created?
Vail's answer to this final question is a qualified 'yes'. He argues that the way to establish power-relationships that put our genes' interest ahead of memes' is to "confront hierarchy with its opposite -- rhizome -- a web-like structure of connected but independent nodes", borrowing from successful models in nature of such structures. The working units (nodes) of this 'revolutionary' structure are self-sufficient, egalitarian communities, and the concept of 'ownership' in such communities is eliminated to prevent the reemergence of hierarchy.
Rhizome-based structures need to be developed and then institutionalized from the bottom up to replace hierarchical ones, Vail argues, in all areas of our society -- social, political, economic, educational etc. to entrench the power and sustainability of self-sufficient communities and render them invulnerable to re-expropriation of that power by hierarchies.
Big Gav then responds with:
I'm not so sure meme culture should be viewed as the enemy - its more a matter of creating and propagating good memes to replace the bad ones, which is what I try to do here in a very limited way (I suspect many analysts of religion and other memetic frameworks would tell you much the same thing - most religions seem to try and align gene replication along with their meme replication for example - which seems to be one of the many things that gets Richard Dawkins' goat about them - but it does make sense - even though those memes often tend to be ones which reinforce hierarchy, which is what I dislike about them).
Reinforcing is not what our hierarchies need—this is why I responded as I did, Silverfox. Nothing personal, right?
Now, if that isn’t encouraging, I don’t know what is.
It's not all that encouraging. The guy's a Wallstreet ( fund manager and former corporate buyout specialist) con artist.
Your faith in humanity blinds you to reality. That fatal blinder is precisely what will allow the foxes in the henhouse, if you ever get the henhouse constructed.
If humanity is as you describe, then we wouldn't even be having this discussion. The predicament that warrants this debate would have been nipped in the bud early in humanity's existence, if it cropped up at all.
It's not all that encouraging. The guy's a Wallstreet ( fund manager and former corporate buyout specialist) con artist.
haab,
I know, but what if it's true? What if the game is ultimately beyond the control of the gamers? Looked at another way, Charles Stross has very cleverly found the fatal flaw of the Panopticon--that it's a two-way mirror or channel of communication.
I don't really harbor any illusions as to some magical delivery from this bondage, but I'm also not about to abandon all hope just because they want us to. In yet another example, while the black man is still not really free, his chains have at least been broken, despite the full might of the Empire (and the penalties imposed on those who would teach him to read. The internet, as full of traps, trolls, and spies as it is, may yet teach us all to read, so that we might all be free.)
Hey Anon 9:24 PM. Thanks for the heads up on scroogle--I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't know about it. Say goodbye Google! That Daniel Brandt seems like an interesting guy. I knew he was one of the good guys when a piece by Farhad Manjoo about him came up.
Jeff -
... you might want to add David Baerwald to your playlist, especially the album TRIAGE. - mh
http://www.matthaley.com
what's a viable and comparable alterative search engine to google?
Them and Us and who allows what? I think it's important to remember that They are Us and we're all products of the same broken society. Regardless of what approach we take or how successful in defeating them it is, unless we fix the fundamentals, this same broken society will keep birthing Thems to replace those we defeat.
This crazy world, with its crazy laws and its crazy societal 'norms' is imprinting crazy on everyone, because it's unnatural. We've got to either find a way to live naturaly or find a way to cope with the unnatural way in which we live.
As far as Aliens to the rescue... why would anyone assume them to be benevolent? So soon we forget the lessons of our youth, the lessons of the mighty television. Twilight Zone episode: How To Serve Man. "We've decoded the rest of the book... Its a COOK BOOK!" I kind of figure a similar tale will one day be told about the U.S. border fence... "It's not to keep the illegals out... It's to keep US IN!"
;)
all the discussion/links on energy have been really interesting and enlightening. it does seem that for a shift to occur, government or some other organizing agent will have to play a role if distribution is to be rational and humane. For this to occur, it seems that, short of armed insurrection, political organization/populist movements have to be utilized.
I think/hope the meme stating that, for some time government has served only a few, powerful interests is becoming more popular. For it to transcend constructs such as republican, democrat, libertarian, socialist, capitalist, etc., however, requires much work and discipline. however, it is easy (and maybe i'm only speaking for myself, here) to get lost in the maze of the energy debate.
on the discussion about socialism never having had a legitimate chance to thrive: this confuses me a bit. Was Stalin (or his system) not really socialist? Was Mao just a stupid socialist? Was the work of Gorbachev too little, too late; was his Russia too crippled by the irrational forces of the Cold War?
I don't mean for my statements to be non-starters and maybe i'm just ignorant of the real meaning of socialism; it's just that I guess i don't see how a socialist system checks a real tendency for individuals to get drunk on power or irrationally protect what they think are their, or their "state's", interests.
I believe in universal health care, but that is mostly because i see health care as a right; what we have now is sick care, anyway - for the most part, providers only get paid when people get sick...
"If humanity is as you describe, then we wouldn't even be having this discussion."
That's not an argument. That's a teleological statement.
The variable of the organizations, technological choices, and ideologies of a society matters and is unable to be reducible to a lazy man's 'human nature'.
One can rationalize it however they see fit, but it's inescapable that humanity's nature is reflected in the choices it makes and the choices it presents itself. The aggregation of those choices has manifested into the norms, mores, ideologies, and institutions to which you refer.
It is a plausible statement. In fact, it's as plausible as any other statement made to the contrary and it's supported with the weight of history.
Tsoldron condensed it perfectly. He took the words right out of my mouth. He said:
I think it's important to remember that They are Us and we're all products of the same broken society. Regardless of what approach we take or how successful in defeating them it is, unless we fix the fundamentals, this same broken society will keep birthing Thems to replace those we defeat.
If history has proven one thing, it has proven Tsoldrin's statement. Why do we continue to repeat the same pattern again and again and again like the movie Groundhog Day. That movie takes on a whole new perspective when you consider Tsoldrin's statement.
I'm just trying to work through the cognitive dissonance because I want to stay healthy. If I accept my proposal, it wipes the cognitive dissonance away like a strong tsunami does an Indonesian coastal forest. If I cling to the hope that humanity is better than this, then the cognitive dissonance constricts tighter and tighter around my neck like a powerful Boa causing my adrenal gland to malfunction and ensuing precipitous weight loss.
"it's inescapable that humanity's nature is reflected in the choices it makes and the choices it presents itself. The aggregation of those choices has manifested into the norms, mores, ideologies, and institutions to which you refer.
Any real statement allows for testability.
You can't test "inevitability", it's what's called a teleological statement.
Another fallacy you or someone else now bring in to justify the previous one is what is known as the collectivist fallacy (back to Bergeson I think?) that 'we as a species' are making all the decisions as a collective.
Just one example hopefully enlightens you how 'we' can have choices presented to us that are not of our desire, yet there they are:
Particularly for things like GMO crops, 'we' are not making many decisions and it all stems back to a very small group around Monsanto and the U.S. government pushing it into consumption--despite widespread 99% desires to have it off the market. Around 90% of the stuff is owned by one company, Monsanto. So, despite 'we' not wanting it, 'we' have it. Your view would thus say "shut up and eat your GMOs, its human nature." I think you see how silly that is as a view?
Instead it is baldly contrary to what you say: that it represents "humanity's nature...reflected in the choices it makes and the choices it presents itself."
Humanity is making the choice for example to completely remove and ban GMOs, though it ain't happening so simply, and the opposite is occurring.
That is why I think you should rethink your collectivist and teleological fallacies that 'we' are making choices on our consumption and a whole lot else. I think we could of course, and that's a healthy sense of responsibility, though to look around in the world and view the gatekept democracies we have and double rigged political parties run by the same corporations, a lot of what we live through daily is a form of heresthetics--a guided sense where someone attempts to clientelize you to their private choices of materials and ideologies, simply by banning or marginalizing other choices.
And if 'human nature' is so important a governor, it's not human nature to fly in the air, or travel in space, or type on a keyboard and communicate to me, or go faster than walking or running, so it doesn't happen right?
See, the second you attempt to put the rubber to the road such ideas about 'human nature' and 'we' as making decisions (instead of others attempting to stop us from making decisions for ourselves) all fall apart.
That is why I suggest you should beware of thinking in such closed loops.
If you main evidence above is that it is "inescapable," then I think you are forced to admit you don't really care about evidence for support because it's not required in your view. That's a wee problem to your 'rigorous intuition'.
peace
not to be a pain, but can someone provide some data sources on the GMO foods debate? and on other debates, as well?
the internet is great, but on so many sites and blogs it seems that people impute knowledge to what appears to be, in a not insignificant number of cases, web-accreted "memes".
(interesting word, meme. learned of it from this site. hope i'm using it right; or maybe i'm using it right and it's my culture that has taught me to use it incorrectly).
DJ Shadow's "Entroducing..." - great album.
Them and Us and who allows what? I think it's important to remember that They are Us and we're all products of the same broken society. Regardless of what approach we take or how successful in defeating them it is, unless we fix the fundamentals, this same broken society will keep birthing Thems to replace those we defeat.
Tsoldrin,
I actually agree with this part: "unless we fix the fundamentals, this same broken society will keep birthing Thems to replace those we defeat," but this only affirms the existence of this divide, this Us-ness and Them-ness. The fundamentals which produce this sick, Groundhog paradigm are that one smaller, infinitely more powerful group controls the larger herd through scarcity economics, war, and terror (among the many tools in its belt...) Never even once has there been an egalitarian society, a level playing field where we were allowed to create a sustainable model. It's a chicken chasing its egg, causally speaking.
If we were allowed to do this thing, it would work. I know this because of the amount of effort that goes into preventing just such an opportunity, or sabotaging any such effort once undertaken.
Jersey Mike,
This pattern you describe is not humanity's eternally renewed "choice" at all--it's the decision undertaken by the ones in power. Can you think of a war that was voted for, a referendum on a fake terror incident, a grassroots initiative to permit a conspiracy, an act of collusion, or the institutionalization of corruption? Of course not. These are not humanity's choices, but the Powers That Be (whoever they be, which is altogether incidental.)
chris,
I've quoted this passage from William Blum so many times here that Jeff is going to ask me to stop one day. It's near the end of the introduction to the 1987 edition of Killing Fields and starts with:
The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism…but read the whole thing, as it's not long and gives all the background you're looking for.
From Jeff Vail’s
"Memes continually refined power-relationships over individuals to the point
where they could kill-off individuals who negatively impacted group survivability.
Howard Bloom described this power-relationship in his concept of the Inner
Judge, the ability of the human brain to recognize certain sets of cultural stimuli
as a signal to remove itself from the population.5 The Inner Judge function causes
the release of neurochemicals with effects ranging from depression to apoptosis
—biologically initiated suicide. The extreme rate of suicide among the aboriginal
populations of Australia, Oceania and North America shows one example of
this Inner Judge at work, where a widespread sense of hopelessness or lack of purpose
drives suicide rates to as much as 500 times greater than that of non-aboriginals."
Yikes, me thinks we need some new memes.
sounder,
The other interesting implication of this Inner Judge faculty is its absence among the truly immoral--do they lose it when they cross that line, were they born without it and as such are not really human, or what? On the bright side, if there is one, this would seem to be an area of neuro-programming that could be re-programmed, once awareness is achieved...
so does this mean that a shark's true nature isn't to prey on other creatures less mighty than itself? its behavior is contrary to its nature? it would rather be a phytoplankton but it feels obliged to use the razor sharp teeth otherwise they go to waste?
i suppose a greater universal species could domesticate us if they felt so inclined, assumiong they're not domesticated themselves, but what if we were to them like ants are to us. they could be here right now and we wouldn't recognize them just as an ant can't recognize us. and if we are like ants to them surely they wouldn't want to domesticate us but rather eradicate us if we got in their way. if we're like ants to them it's probable that they view us similarly to how we view ants, i.e. collectively.
Strong stuff from Blum, cuttlefish. Thanks for the link. Another great book on the hijacking of U.S. foreign policy by the defense industry is Joseph Carroll's "House of War". The book's starting point is the notion of "unconditional surrender" in WWII and the path initiated in the Pentagon by Forrestal (among others). Seems like a great primer for more detailed and non-instiutional books such as Blum's.
Still not sure how Mao fits in with the idea that socialism has never had a fair shot. Was it that Mao was too much a totalitarian and the Chinese people too compliant?
Nemo, not sure here, but are you putting forth the often perverted theory of "survival of the fittest"? there are plenty of examples demonstrating collective actions of benefit to the "individual" and his/her/its survival. Since we as thumb-wielding crazy things actually have great control over choice and will, i think as individuals we create and choose our own "human nature".
we're also at times irrational, so crazy shit happens.
GMO stats:
"Yet despite Monsanto's rosy predictions, a March 28 Greenpeace report, "Risky Prospects" points out that the agbiotech industry is in the doldrums. http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/GreenPeace032802.cfm
Despite projections made five years ago by Monsanto and the White House that most countries would soon adopt biotech farming, basically only four countries are currently cultivating gene-altered crops (US, Canada, and Argentina, with 96% of total acreage; and China with 3%).
In addition, only two crops, soybeans and corn, account for a full 82% of all global acreage, while two others, cotton and canola, account for 17%.
In the year 2000, the seeds of one company, Monsanto, made up 91% of all GE crops, while, for all practical purposes only two other Gene Giants have products on the market, Syngenta (formerly called Novartis/AstraZeneca) and Aventis (now owned by Bayer).
While total sales of agbiotech seeds and rBGH will amount to less than $5 billion this year, global organic food sales will be five times greater or $ 25 billion.
While only four countries are growing GE crops on any scale, farmers in 130 nations are now producing and exporting certified organic foods and crops. At the current annual 24% growth rate of the organic sector in the US, organic farming will make up over 50% of US agriculture by 2020. And of course, if current consumer and regulatory trends continue, Frankencrops will be driven off the market long before organic becomes the norm."
http://www.organicconsumers.org/newsletter/biod39.cfm
"Still not sure how Mao fits in with the idea that socialism has never had a fair shot. Was it that Mao was too much a totalitarian and the Chinese people too compliant?"
comment on two below quotes:
Mao was sponsored by Skull and Bones by what was called Yale in China. Mao actually published a Yale in China subsidized revolutionary newspaper from funds of what were basically U.S. intelligence front full of Bonesmen.
Read both the requisite chapters in George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography or this quote from an article about Mao and Yale in China earlier in his revolutionary career.
However, in the first quote, don't fall for the all 'black versus white' polemic there, regarding Sun Yat Sen.
Three sides were basically working through secret societies.
All three were opium smugglers.
Everybody was fighting for drugs and the territory of the ex-Ch'ing Empire--(Tung Society/high Masonic) Sun Yat Sen (he attempted twice to topple the Ch'ing, succeeded on the second occasion in 1911); Bonesmen (presumably maintaining and keeping up Maoist ties), Scottish Rite Masonry in there as well during the Chinese Civil War doing who knows what; and the Green Gang-organized crime-Nationalist wing of Chiang Kai-shek. All were equally opium funded. Sun Yat Sen put it down, until he was dead, and I think then it was 'nationalized' (monopoly for one private group), then it was different. You could read all about it is the point if you were curious.
The European powers of the world made China a basket case from the Opium wars of 1841 until well after WWII through 1949 by first making and mass printing anarchist and other European phamplets (lots of the Chinese high family youths of the elites went to Paris to be educated in "modern Western ways" in a late Ch'ing context and after its toppling, Paris pipeline to various strands of revolutionary ideas from there were strong in China. Chinese anarchism was particuarly strong, stronger than any socialist movement by the way.
That's when Bonesmen step in and change a few things...In this pospt 1911 period through 1949, there were many different crazy realignments. Much sponsoring and vying for different sidesm and after Sun Yat Sen's death in 1925 the whole Republic movement sort of was dismantled from the outside and from the inside, leading to a 25 year hell known as the Chinese Civil War (in which Britain sponsored and funded Japan to invade China during this period to really mess things up).
China has been through hell for over 150 years due to Western intervention to make it a basket case.
quotes:
Mao was a Whiffenpoof
1.
"What has this to do with Bush policy towards China--or for that matter, Bush's "War on Drugs"? (Note: the last television news reporter to ask Bush a critical question concerning the many narcotics agents who are complaining about how bad the "drug war" was going, was promptly fired from his job shortly after the press conference - Branton)
"George Bush, the first U.S. diplomatic representative to the People's Republic of China back in 1973 [as a cloaked drug running CIA contingent as well], was a member of Skull and Bones. So were his father, brother, son, uncle, nephew, and several cousins.
Winston Lord, the Reagan-Bush administration Ambassador to China was a member;
so were his father and several other relatives. James Lilley, the current Ambassador to China, was a member of Skull and Bones, as was his brother.
Except during the Carter administration, every U.S. Ambassador to Beijing
since Kissinger's deal with Mao Zedong was a member of the same tiny Yale cult.
A mere coincidence?
"MAO WAS A YALIE - Back in 1903, Yale Divinity School established a number of schools and hospitals throughout China that were collectively known as 'Yale in China.' It has since been shown that 'Yale in China' was an intelligence network whose purpose was to destroy the republican movement of Sun Yat-sen on behalf of the Anglo-American Establishment.
The Anglo-American "Establishment" hated Sun, because he wanted to develop China. On the other hand, they loved the Chinese communists because they intended to keep China backward, and were committed to growing dope. [Lie. They all were dope runners.]
One of 'Yale in China's' most important students was Mao Zedong.
"During World War II, 'Yale in China' was a primary instrument used by the U.S. Establishment and its Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to install the Maoists into power.
'Yale in China' was run by OSS operative Reuben Holden, the husband of Bush's cousin, and also a member of Skull and Bones.
"The Maoists [and the other two groups, then after Sun's death in 1925, only two groups equally opium funded in the Chinese civil war] made China into the world's largest opium producer.
'Yale in China' was also closely associated with the New York-based Union Theological Seminary, which has been a center for U.S. subversion of Asia (literal wolves in sheep's clothing - Branton).
Every prominent radical leader operating in Korea today, for example, was trained at Union Theological. Union Theological was dominated for twenty years by Henry Sloane Coffin, a U.S. intelligence executive from the Sloane and Coffin families. He was a Skull and Bones member as were a dozen of his relatives.
"Nor should it be forgotten that Averell Harriman, the former Ambassador to Moscow who did so much to build up the Soviet Union, was a member of Skull and Bones. Harriman was also a business partner of Prescott Bush, Sr., the father of Maoist enthusiast George Bush."
http://www.illuminati-news.com/S&B-China.htm
2.
From George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, by Tarpley and Chaitkin
Meeting of the Monsters
In September, 1975, as Ford was preparing for a year-end visit to China, Kissinger organized a Presidential reception at the White House for a delegation from the Beijing China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. This was the first high-level trade delegation to come to the United States from China. The meeting was carefully choreographed by Kissinger and Scowcroft. The Ford Library has preserved a supplementary memo to Scowcroft, at that time the NSC chief, from Richard H. Solomon of the NSC staff, which reads as follows: "Regarding the President's meeting with the Chinese trade group, State has called me requesting that [Bonesman] Ambassador Bush and [Kissinger henchman] Phil Habib attend the meeting. You will recall having approved Bush's sitting in on the President's meeting with the Congressional delegation that recently returned from China. Hence, Bush will be floating around the White House at this period of time anyway. I personally think it would be useful to have Bush and Habib sit in. The Cabinet Room should be able to hold them. [Bonesman] Win Lord is someone else who might be invited."
This meeting was eventually held on September 8, 1975. A little earlier Bush en route to Washington, had sent a hand-written note to Scowcroft dated August 29, 1975.
This missive urged Scowcroft to grant a request from Codel Anderson, who had just completed a visit to China complete with a meeting with Deng Xiao-ping, to be allowed to report back to Ford personally. These were the type of contacts which later paid off for Bush's cronies. During 1977, Bush returned to China as a private citizen, taking with him his former Zapata business partner, J. Hugh Liedtke.
[Liedtke paid Hunt the Nixon hushmoney in Watergate.]
In January, 1978, Liedtke was on hand when the Chinese oil minister was Bonesman Bush's guest for dinner at his home in Houston.
In May, 1978, Liedtke and Pennzoil were at the top of the Chinese government's list of US oil firms competing to be accorded contracts for drilling in China.
Then, in the late summer of 1978, J. Hugh Liedtke of Pennzoil made another trip to China, during which he was allowed to view geological studies which had previously been held as state secrets by Beijing.
Pennzoil was in the lead for a contract to begin offshore drilling in the South China sea. [fn 16]
Kissinger made four visits to Beijing during Bush's tenure there, three solo appearances and a final junket accompanied by Ford. On October 19, 1975, Kissinger arrived in Beijing to prepare for Ford's visit, set for December. There were talks between Kissinger and Deng Xiao-ping, with Bonesman Bush, Habib, Bonesman Winston Lord and Foreign Minister Qiao taking part.
It was during this visit that, Bush would have us believe, that he had his first face to face meeting with Mao Tse Tung, the leader of a communist revolution which had claimed the lives of some 100,000,000 Chinese since the end of the Second World War.
Mao, one of the greatest monsters of the twentieth century, was 81 years old at that time. He was in very bad health; when he opened his mouth to meet Kissinger, "only guttural noises emerged." Mao's study contained tables covered with tubes and medical apparatus, and a small oxygen tank. Mao was unable to speak coherently, but had to write Chinese characters and an occasional word in English on a note pad which he showed to his interpreters. Kissinger inquired as to Mao's health. Mao pointed to his head saying, "This part works well. I can eat and sleep." Then Mao tapped his legs: "These parts do not work well. They are not strong when I walk. I also have some trouble with my lungs. In a word, I am not well. I am a showcase for visitors, " Mao summed up. The croaking, guttural voice continued: "I am going to heaven soon. I have already received an invitation from God."
If Mao was a basso profondo of guttural croaking, then Kissinger was at least a bass-baritone: "Don't accept it too soon," he replied. "I accept the orders of the Doctor," wrote Mao on his note pad. Mao at this point had slightly less than a year to live. Bush provided counterpoint to these lower registers with his own whining tenor.
Bush was much impressed by Mao's rustic background and repertiore of Chinese barnyard expressions. Referring to a certain problem in Sino-American relations, Mao dismissed it as no more important than a "fang go pi," no more important than a dog fart. Bush has always had a strange fascination for scatological references, which is probably rooted amid the taboos of his clenched Anglo-Saxon family background, where the boys never heard their father fart. We have seen Bush's obsessive recounting of LBJ's much-told "chicken shit" anecdote about the House of Representatives.
Mao went on, commenting about US military superiority, and then saying: "God blesses you, not us. God does not like us because I am a militant warlord, also a Communist. No, he doesn't like me. He likes you three." Mao pointed to Kissinger, Bonesman Bush, and Bonesman Winston Lord. Towards the end of the encounter, this lugubrious monster singled out Boneman Bush for special attention. Mao turned to Winston Lord. "This ambassador," said Mao while gesturing towards Bush, "is in a plight. Why don't you come visit ?" "I would be honored," Bush replied according to his own account, "but I'm afraid you're very busy." "Oh, I'm not busy," said Mao."I don't look after internal affairs. I only read the international news. You should really come visit."
Bush claims [fn 17] that he never accepted Chairman Mao's invitation to come around for private talks. Bush says that he was convinced by members of his own staff that Mao did not really mean to invite him, but was only being polite. Was Bush really so reticent, or is this another one of the falsifications with which his official biographies are studded? The world must await the opening of the Beijing and Foggy Bottom archives.
[Note that the Liedke/Bonesman Bush connection already working via Chinese once classified geological studies for oil, mentioned above; Liedke and Bush very close to intel funding streams; then we have Bush singled out to talk privately to Mao, no one else.]
In the meantime, we must take a moment to contemplate that gathering of October, 1975 in Chairman Mao's private villa, secluded behind many courtyards and screens in the Chungnanhai enclave of Chinese rulers not far from the Great Hall of the People and Tien An Men, where less than a year later an initial round of pro-democracy demonstrations would be put down in blood in the wake of the funeral of Zhou En-lai.
Mao, Kissinger, and Bush: has history ever seen a tete-a-tete of such mass murderers?
Mao, identifying himself with Chin Shih Huang, the first emperor of all of China and founder of the Chin dynasty, who had built the Great Wall, burned the books, and killed the Confucian scholars-- this Mao had massacred ten per cent of his own people, ravaged Korea, strangled Tibet.
Kissinger's crimes were endless, from the Middle East to Vietnam, from the oil crisis of 73-74 with the endless death in the Sahel to India-Pakistan, Chile, and many more. Kissinger, Mao, and Bush had collaborated to install the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which was now approaching the zenith of its genocidal career.
Compared to the other two, Bush may have appeared as an apprentice of genocide: he had done some filibustering in the Caribbean, had been part of the cheering section for the Indonesia massacres of 1965, and then he had become a part of the Kissinger apparatus, sharing in the responsibility for India-Pakistan, the Middle East, Cambodia.
But as Bush advanced through his personal cursus honorum, his power and his genocidal dexterity were growing, foreshadowing such future triumphs as the devastation of El Chorillo in Panama in December, 1989, and his later masterwork of savagery, the Gulf war of 1991.
By the time of Bush's administration, Anglo-American finance and the International Monetary Fund were averaging some 50,000,000 needless deaths per year in the developing sector.
But Mao, Kissinger, and Bush exchanged pleasantries that day in Mao's sitting room in Chungnanhai. If the shades of Hitler or Stalin had sought admission to that colloqium, they might have been denied entrance. Later, in early December, Gerald Ford, accompanied by his hapless wife and daughter, came to see the moribund Mao for what amounted to a photo opportunity with a living cadaver. The AP wire issued that day hyped the fact that Mao had talked with Ford for 1 hour and fifty minutes, nearly twice as long as the Great Steersman had given to Nixon in 1972. Participants in this meeting included Kissinger, Bonesman Bush, Scowcroft, and Bonesman Winston Lord.
Even such Kissingerian heavies as Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Richard Solomon of the NSC were not allowed to stay for the meeting.
Bush was now truly a leading Kissinger clone. A joint communique issued after this session said that Mao and Ford had had "earnest and significant discussions ...on wide-ranging issues in a friendly atmosphere." At this meeting, Chairman Mao greeted Bush with the words, "You've been promoted."
Mao turned to Ford, and added: "We hate to see him go." At a private lunch with Vice Premier Deng Xiao-ping, the rising star of the post-Mao succession, Deng assured Bush that he was considered a friend of the Chinese Communist hierarchy who would always be welcome in China, "even as head of the CIA."
For, as we will see, this was to be the next stop on Bush's cursus honorum.
...
http://tarpley.net/bush14.htm
Isn't mesothelioma curable by using 15 Hz zappers? The schematics are free, open-source, and people are claiming that it can basically effectively cure cancer. Which would be tremendous for mesotheleoma victims, but what would that do to the mesothelioma lawsuit business? Time will tell!
The home of the infamous european toxic clan, psycho urban fraggers that pawn the virtual return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory battlefields.
Just Pub, a dumb return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory comic strip by feuersturm.
Post a Comment
<< Home