Thursday, May 31, 2007

Riddle Me This (Part Two)



"Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures-of-speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases." - Grant Morrison, The Filth

George Orwell concluded his 1940 essay on Charles Dickens by describing him as "a man who is "generously angry....a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls." The same of course could be said of Orwell, who is inclined to piss off any party which thinks its ideology can delimit the breadth of his thought. That's not at all a bad thing to be - a generously angry individual - but it's a hard thing to be, and no less so with the many little orthodoxies of our age which still stink up the place.

Cindy Sheehan's another. She was, she wrote on Monday, "the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party." But when she began to hold Democratic feet to the fire of Iraq (and surely at least since the 2006 midterms and the concession on funding and no timeline for withdrawal, the war is as much theirs as it is George Bush's), "support for my cause started to erode and the 'left' started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used."

Sheehan observes she has been "deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike," but I think that misses the mark. "Bipartisanship" is the smelly orthodoxy of American political life that safeguards unelected and non-representative power from serious challenge. What the United States desperately needs are more partisans - not party activists or "Yellow Dog" Democrats, but militant irregulars who can no longer hold their nose.

But even without parties, and beyond the buffers of the consensus-building system, little orthodoxies take root and quickly rot, but their true believers cover the growing stink with perfumed affirmations. Today's "New Truth" movement is innervated with examples. Should you challenge any of them - take your pick - you invite upon yourself the characterization of a defender of the official story, even if you contend a constellation of great criminal interests, including American, share culpability for the attacks.

It may be shorthand to write "state-sponsored," and even shorter to say "Bush knew," but one is an imprecision while the other a mischaracterization, and both have been handed-down since 9/11 as hobbling orthodoxes.

What can "state-sponsored" mean, when much of the United State's security apparatus has been contracted out to private cartels? And if criminal interests are sponsoring the state, rather than the reverse, then is there a phrase more accurate than our repeating that 9/11 was an example of state-sponsored terror? If so, then "Bush knew" becomes even less sensible, and helpful. Pedagogically it's served a purpose, but the purpose expires in 2008 while the crime of 9/11 will remain unpunished.

Then there's the orthodoxy of Zionist power theory, in which the Israeli tail always wags its American dog. As I've said before, that doesn't explain the motivation and influence of Dick Cheney. Nor, now, how the Vice President's war party means to "nudge Israel" into provocation with Iran to tie Bush's hands, as an "end run" around administration hesitance to strike Tehran.

Interestingly, last month Interpol issued warrants for three Israelis "sought on charges of criminal conspiracy and instruction in terrorism" for their work training Colombian drug cartels and the far right death squads. It's been long enough coming, though don't hold your breath for the arrests. Yair Klein, Melnik Ferri and Tzedaka Abraham also trained the Contras in Honduran camps, and the genocidal Guatemalan army as well. Now, does this represent a crime of Israel, or Mossad, or "the Jews," or an example of something else? Peter Dale Scott, in Drugs, Oil and War, quotes Klein on his training of the Medellin Cartel: "We are positive that what we are doing is within the interests of the Americans, and so far it was always like that." Scott adds: "This work drew the comment from a general in the Israeli Knesset that 'Israel is the 'dirty work' contractor for the US administration."

I think the "white van" of 9/11, and the Mossad agents who are known to have shadowed al qaeda cells on US soil, make best sense as evidences of work contracted out by Criminals Without Borders, rather than, as in, say, Eric Hufschmid's school of blood libel paranoia, more examples of Jewish perfidity. (And here too, perhaps, we see the parapolitical prominence of drug trafficking. It's instructive to note how the pre-9/11 flap of Israeli "art students" targeted the facilities and the personnel of the US Drug Enforcement Agency.)

UFOlogy, too, has its orthodoxes, no less so for its being even further marginalized. In his introduction to Visitation, Peter Hough describes falling into conversation at a party with a nuclear physicist who told him, emphatically, that he didn't believe in UFOs because the distances between stars was too vast for travel. Hough agreed, and said it made more sense to him to consider the quantum possibilities of incursions from extra-dimensions, rather than by extraterrestrials. But Hough's response made no impression on the man, who had bought into the dueling orthodoxes of UFO skeptics and true believers alike, that the choice is between "misperception, hallucination, wish fulfilment and fraud," or spacecraft. And then there are those who see no high weirdness beyond that induced by mind-controlling technologies of human agency. But whatever the phenomenon may, it is too vast and too old and too strange to be solved with a single answer. Which is what orthodoxes demand.

(This, in part, is why I highly value the judgement of Jacques Vallee, who's written that sometimes he feels he must be the only person in the world who doesn't know what UFOs are.)

Our inquiries need a system to evaluate the evidence, but the assumptions of our system should be provisional. Otherwise we have a closed loop, and our system hardens into orthodoxy. And orthodoxy is the death of imaginative inquiry.


By the way, until the book is out of my hands (and I'm afraid it's already late), I'm afraid I won't be able to do much better than a weekly post. I think I need to say that to keep from making myself sick with work. Upside is, it should be a pretty good book.

98 Comments:

Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Jeff,

You don't need to apologize for feeding us regularly; we forage well enough in your necessary absence (although it is nice that you leave the porch light on and let us camp out here while you're busy.) And good luck with the book.

I do have one question, however. It's not exactly "news" that the Democrats are as much a part of The Machine as their seemingly more repugnant partners, but I did find it interesting that within the comment on the nature of orthodoxies, one seemed to have slipped in there unnoticed:

...a nuclear physicist who told him, emphatically, that he didn't believe in UFOs because the distances between stars was too vast for travel. Hough agreed, and said it made more sense to him to consider the quantum possibilities of incursions from extra-dimensions, rather than by extraterrestrials.

I know they're notoriously difficult to spot (these shapeshifting orthodoxies, that is) but isn't 'our man' in this narrative, the open-minded Hough, equally prone to ramming his head into the convenient either/or slot by so quickly assenting that space is too vast for travel between the stars? How would we know that? Based on what we know?

I realize that the scientific method has to be based on something, but how long ago was it that we first said we knew all there was to know? Perspective is always a handy device for opening tightly closed minds:

"When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly... he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science... Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries."
- from a 1924 lecture by Max Planck

For more on how much we think we know, which only serves to illustrate how very little we do know (except when it comes to politics, which is as obvious as it is deceptive), try this.

Okay, one more question, for the evolutionists out there: are we Lilliputians or Yahoos? Or has there been some mixing of genes?

5/31/2007 03:28:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

IC..I tend to couch my meta phizique in reel time. There is a good reason why only a few are born immaculate, walk on water,levitate or walk through walls. There is baggage with that kind of physics. This is why I don't pursue Edgar Cayce. In fact, I avoid him.

Put another way, let us now solve the problem of what came first..the chicken or the egg. Schauberger figured it out. It's the recursive shape of the shell that came first. Everything else followed.

5/31/2007 10:16:00 PM  
Blogger tridentblue said...

Its interesting to talk about orthodoxies, because even in rebelling from them we end up in their sway. I was struck by your use of the term "far right" describing criminal gangs in Latin American. What does "right" even mean? Is it the paramilitary gun and drug running right? The devotely christian born again right? The fervently anti-government right? The fervently pro-government Bush fan right?

I think we begin to reclaim ourselves from orthodoxy when we reclaim our creative power, our own poetic descriptions of what things are...even if we end up having to create our own words. Anything to be free from the slavery.

Awesome stuff, btw. I am REALLY looking forward to any publications you put out!!!

6/01/2007 03:09:00 AM  
Blogger tmb said...

In retrospect, the removal of Paul Wellstone, who would have been one of the few effective, and credible, political leaders working against both corporate parties as to ending the war, becomes even more chilling and, from the point of view of his enemies, more understandable . . . good thing the FBI arrived so soon on the crash scene to afford its protection (correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that at least one set of investigators, not MSM of course, determined that it would have been impossible for the FBI to arrive on the scene when they did w/o having left for it before the crash even occurred . . . perhaps some of those fine agents helped on the 911 investigation also . . . .).

6/01/2007 09:43:00 AM  
Blogger A Fake Doctor said...

Here comes my congratulatory ramble.

An excellent post, insofar as it expresses my "none of the above" attitude towards American politics today, and to some extent towards Israeli undemocratic tendencies [and I'm one of the "half-Jews" that Israeli government-sanctioned Judaism defines out of existence].

From the branches of government to the bicameral house and the two party system, it seems like the United States government was based on a dualistic (dialectic?) structure of checks and balances, where it was presumed that one side would be more correct on an issue than the other. In a Parliamentary system, citizens have a greater choice of parties to reflect their political inclinations. However, when alliances become necessary and issues central to the party's core agenda or ideology are in question, the political process stalls unless there is compromise. Also, two eternal parties are easier to control from inside than a system where it is easier to create a new party and move into Parliament.

I was reading Jim Marrs' Rule By Secrecy and while he (necessarily?) connects the dots without historically or legally adequate evidence, it does seem that the Hegelian/Marxist dialectic is an effective philosophy for influencing society.

If not Republican, then Democrat. If not one of us, then one of them. Everybody likes the promise of simple solutions--quick fixes and easy to understand slogans. I abhor seeing the liberal youth who think seven bumper stickers are enough to move the world towards their ideal. I fear that the opposition to the political mainstream has been reduced to simplistic sloganeering and convenient displays. I was a member of a state Green Party--they were nearly a self-satire and presented no real threat to entrenched power interests. I don't trust the upstart, unproven ideological fanatic any more than the next man.

How do we break party interests down into issue-interest alliances in a system like this? I want to see citizens coming together regardless of religion, race, and political party for important reasons but I do not see any available mechanism at this time.

6/01/2007 11:38:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

The Dr. said:

"How do we break party interests down into issue-interest alliances in a system like this? I want to see citizens coming together regardless of religion, race, and political party for important reasons but I do not see any available mechanism at this time."

Directly addressing that in vote frameworks toward competing for the full electorate instead of just competing for the partial electorate and ignoring the rest, here.

And in removing gerrymandered districts, here.

And more than a few suggestions in the book, or:

http://biostate.blogspot.com/

6/01/2007 01:33:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

"The truth, which neither the traditional right nor left wishes to admit, is that broadly enfranchised, local grassroots efforts to identify with and care for natural regions are so powerful, so ultimately democratic, and so basically popular with the American people that they threaten the huge, entrenched political organizations on both sides." -- Robert L. Thayer, Jr.

6/01/2007 01:35:00 PM  
Blogger muddy elephant said...

These quotes are not meant to be adversarial but more to represent underlying themes which seem relevant here.

If you haven't read Camus' "The Stranger" you might want to skip the last quote.

"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow.....When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths, or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."

--Robert Pirsig

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

--James Baldwin

"It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still."

--from "The Stranger" by Albert Camus

6/01/2007 02:35:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Jeff talks about Cindy Sheehan stumbling into the brick wall behind the stage curtain as a sort of unexpected event (well, to her at least), but L is seeing farther here when he says that we only fall into other orthodoxies when we continue to use the language of the Minders. Sapir & Whorf were right! (Even if Chomsky & Pinker mugged them in the academy and conspired to hide the truth): we shape ourselves and our reality with our language. Or, more accurately I suppose, it shapes us. That’s why Right & Left are so plastic, so meaningless, so misleading.

The difficulty in overcoming this language trap, this miasmic Matryoshka of perception schlepping memes, is that to really think outside of the all boxes on sale, you’d have to have a frame of reference that was essentially alien. Or, even better, fundamentally human, unlike all the sham shells. L talks about a sort of poetic language enabling us to see what the shimmering veils of conventional labels occlude:

I think we begin to reclaim ourselves from orthodoxy when we reclaim our creative power, our own poetic descriptions of what things are...even if we end up having to create our own words. Anything to be free from the slavery.

This is very close to what ericswan & Schauberger were doing when they wrestled the cosmic egg puzzle to the ground. This is what Sounder is really after when he constantly reviews the nature of his categories (his spirit-brother Jaap Bax calls it the “morphology of categories” in his On Being and Essence.) Or, back-to-Nature-like, you could be a druid for a day and use that language, the long-forgotten but still familiar mother tongue.

Another route is the Alan Watts Buddhist trip, where seeing all-as-one makes the labels subside into the illusion they are, and while this is spiritually satisfying (I think), it doesn’t help us much in the soul-stealing material world they’ve thrown up around us. We might be better off engaging in the sort of tightrope walking that Jeff is doing here: turning the tables on the label-makers by using their own language of deceit to expose their deceptions.

We know we can’t trust the official denouncers of the bad guys—Richard quoted Chomsky the other day defending his role in The Machine:

“What am I supposed to do, live in a cabin in Montana?”

As a matter of fact, yes, you old whore. How many alternative communities could you have funded with the wealth you’ve secured through telling us how awful the Empire is? You didn’t have to give it all away—just a fraction to seed projects which showed that there was a valid path. But, no, you couldn’t possibly admit that Galileo’s book of nature held a purpose, a key to a meaningful existence.

No, Jeff’s right; you can’t trust any of these parasitic prostitutes. On the other hand, there are a few guides to tell us where the Empire led us astray, using their own language to reveal what’s been so long hidden. Take Chapter 9 from my boy Kötke’s Final Empire: THE CULTURAL DYNAMICS OF EMPIRE (it's a little long, but a great example of a proper dissection, without the oh-but-what-can-we-do ending that the whores on the Left always include):


The emphasis in tribal society was on sharing. In most tribal societies the chief spokesperson for the group was generally the poorest in material terms. This is because that person had shared the most and was therefore held in esteem by the group. This changed to an emphasis on materialism symbolized by the emperor who possessed riches amongst his peasant subjects who had little.

The inversion represented a severance from the consciousness of the living world, what some call a change from pantheism to deism.

Natural culture has a continuing contact with the spiritual consciousness of the living world. Each person in Natural culture had the cultural understanding that each living thing was a spiritually conscious entity as well as the understanding that everything in material reality was spiritually vivified. When the inversion caused the severance from this, human spiritual sensibility became abstracted into "religion." No longer was the entire world spiritually animated but the focus was on a pantheon of abstract deities or on one deity. These "sky gods" were not part of the corporeal world but were abstracted somewhere in mental space. This was the first alienation and separation from life. This radically changed human perception. In the former world of the forager/hunter, the cultural experience was a continuing and direct spiritual contact with the cosmos. When the culture inverted this was severed and the narrow focus was placed on abstracted "Gods," priestly hierarchies and material goods. Natural culture, the forager/hunter culture that lived in integration with the natural world, viewed reality as a composite life where all beings worked together to produce the whole in a natural manner. With the advent of empire the reality view changed to centralized power concepts such as the abstracted gods and goddesses and the centralized authority of the emperor who in most cases claimed to be ruling by divine right granted by a male god. This tendency toward abstraction demonstrated itself in money as an abstraction of biological energy and in writing as an abstraction of human speech. We can also say that now, empire culture is abstracted- removed- from the earth and only retains a "resource" relationship with the living world.

Wisdom and human maturity were casualties of the inversion.

Generally in Natural Culture, humans managed their numbers and had great awareness of their cooperative relationship with the living world and great respect for it. All species are self-regulating with respect to their environments. This on the human level we could call maturity. Later, we will show that tribal society and also animal species go to considerable lengths to be self-regulating. The examples of population control are equaled by the care not to overburden the environment with hunting or other use. There was respect for the living world as well as a concern about future generations. With inversion, group responsibility and responsibility to the young, so that they could endure, has been lost. This has been replaced by a focus on individual accumulation with disregard of responsibility to the group, the living world or concern about the future survival of the young. Animals all seek to protect their young and provide them with optimum survival but the culture of empire does not. A popular example of the wisdom of Natural Culture is the rule of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy, that all decisions in council be viewed with respect to their effects upon the seventh generation. These values of Natural Culture were centered on one fundamental- respect. People had respect for themselves-valued themselves- respect for others and respect for the cosmos that had given life to all. The effect of the inversion has been to elevate the negative social values of violence, selfishness, lying, stealing (conquest) and irresponsibility to the level of cultural standards.

The Dynamic Cultural Factors

Our ancestors lived by adaptation to the life of the earth. When the pathology of empire broke out in the human family this adaptation and unity with the cosmos faded, and rather than adapt to the cosmos, humans became "God," as it were. Humans sought control rather than adaptation. This is the pivotal fact of the culture of empire. Humans in empire culture began this control with domesticated "biological slaves": wheat, barley, sheep, goats, water buffalo and rice. When this change occurred, human culture changed from ecological balance to ecological imbalance. The biological slaves have historically been used along with human slavery to extort energy from the earth's metabolism in a parasitic relationship. This led to the idea that humans have no need to unify and act responsibly and cooperatively with the cosmos but instead it was the cosmic role of humans to control the cosmos. Thus, the suicide pact of empire began. This need to control, so characteristic, truly, of a position of weakness, is the pivotal fact from which the coercive dynamics of empire culture flow.

The attitude of control rather than cooperation with a greater power is a quantum shift in human perception. From a position that all perceived reality is manifest from unseen spiritual dynamics with which tribal people sought to be in contact, humans in empire began to see the world as a source of gratification for culturally defined needs-the accumulation of material wealth and power over the earth and other people. Meaning was taken from the spiritual forces of life and the cosmos and placed on material accumulation. In this respect the cosmos became meaningless. This also contributed to a generalized sense of the meaninglessness of human life within the Culture of Empire.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, go fight the power. Build an egg. But don't get fooled by the faux realities for sale. Here's a few interesting alternatives:


Imagining the Tenth Dimension Forum Index -> The philosophical/spiritual implications, including some interesting vid links, like:

* The Nature Of Consciousness

* (Another) Nature of Consciousness

and, the ever-interesting

* Gateway of Space: Quantum-Art


Hey, Muddy,

What do you suppose was going through The Leader's mind when he read that passage last summer?

6/01/2007 04:07:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Cindy Sheehan wasn't down for long, and she knows to tap on the keystone increasingly being used to perpetuate and shore up all these lies and Fourth Reich legislation penned by the hand-in-glove Democrat/Republicans.

This will be bigger than Charlie Sheen and/or Rosie O'Donnell meme packaging....

"Twin Towers' Collapse Looked Like Controlled Demolition", says Sheehan. Anti-war icon supports move for new investigation into 9/11

Anti-war icon Cindy Sheehan has gone public on her support for the 9/11 truth movement after she told a radio show that the collapse of the twin towers looked like a controlled demolition and that there should be a new investigation into the terrorist attacks.

Sheehan, who made headlines this week after she distanced herself from the Democratic party and the establishment left, joined Alex Jones to share her views on her skepticism towards the official 9/11 story.

Sheehan said her decision to desert the Democrats was sparked last week when the Iraq war funding bill was passed and it was at this point she realized the Democrats had co-opted her simply to help them regain Congress and that they had no interest in ending the war.

Sheehan attacked Hillary Clinton as a "warhawk and a "warmonger" and said there was very little distinction between her and John McCain or Rudy Giuliani.

On 9/11, Sheehan expressed her support for the Jersey Girl's petition, which calls for a new independent investigation of the terrorist attacks, slamming the 9/11 Commission Report as a "total travesty and a smokescreen."

"George Bush and Dick Cheney held hands and testified behind closed doors, not under oath," said Sheehan, adding, "There are many things that just don't add up on that day."

Sheehan questioned why U.S. air defenses were distracted by drills and exercises scheduled for the morning of 9/11 and why standard operating procedure for intercepting errant aircraft was not followed for the first and only time in history.

"When you lose control of an airplane, you intercept it with a military jet and that should only take seconds - from what I understand it's not even an order to do that it's mandatory," said Sheehan.

Speaking on the collapse of the twin towers, Sheehan stated, "It does look to me like a controlled demolition - I'm not an expert - but it does look to me like a controlled demolition - I'm looking at common sense."

"I do see some very high profile people saying it was an inside job," concluded Sheehan.

Click here to listen to Sheehan's interview on the Alex Jones Show.

Comments (313) | Trackback


http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2007/310507cindysheehan.htm

Bam! This is great. The whole categorical thinking of left and right in the USA (not that there isn't or can't be a difference in left and right ideologically, just the U.S.'s version is counterfeit) is slowly wearing away to show the fascist Janus faced coin it is.

6/02/2007 06:27:00 AM  
Blogger The Way It Can Be said...

Labels, Babels & Tyme

One of the fallacies of logic is called "attack the person". It's not valid but in the poisonous pit of politics, it's often used in the subtler form of labeling.

For each of the self-designated groups, these labels trigger a whole complex of meaning and emotion. "Left" or "Right" - the more powerful labels have been smelted down to a single word. Sometimes this short-hand is useful but most of the time, it means that we're reached the end of normal discourse and we're now "at war".

The problem at that point is that a few groups are much better positioned to wage and win these political & economic wars especially as their cold unfeeling hands are already on the levers of power.

"Liberal", "Neo-Con".

We're simultaneously at the juncture where we are in a state of war with the enemies of the open and civil society and trying to crack apart the hypocrisy & deceit & violence that is mis-transforming our nations into a police-state mosiac (selectively applied, selectively invoked).

"Terrorist", "Patriot".

When the words themselves lose meaning then they become unwieldy as shields or swords (which is part of the intent of the power-brokers).

Struggle, Confrontation, Conflict, Peace & Justice.

Next epoch..


Evan Palmer
The Way It Can Be
http://twicb.blogspot.com

6/02/2007 09:45:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Only 11 posts and the gatekeepers left behind in their perpetual confusion. LOL. The Knights of the Round Table is one of many forms of "the medium is the message" format that is blogging. With a bit of tweaking here and there, this medium of cold hard type on ethereal cosmic consciousness will be the stuff of legends. Parse-evil to Percival all in a day's work.

This is the Age of Aquarius.

6/02/2007 11:26:00 AM  
Blogger brenda said...

No, this is the age of Pisces. A thousand years of division and strife. Only after that will we enter the age of Aquarius.

6/02/2007 02:26:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

ericswan,

Here’s another one for you—I’ve been going through Robert Arnett’s website for a while now, meaning to link it, but it always seems to slip my mind. Fascinating stuff, especially the vortex theory stuff that’s behind this Free Energy and Free Thinking, Advanced Level, The New Physics of Bio-mimicry page.

(With regard to the astro sign argument, we may not have another thousand years...and they're both watery, right? Follow the link...)

6/02/2007 04:46:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Interesting chew of ideas at your link above. Here is one for your vocabulary. May I suggest you check out the B12 story?

http://www.championtrees.org/yarrow/RofD.htm

6/02/2007 11:19:00 PM  
Blogger CuriosityShop said...

When I first began my journey on the internet I believed everything. And all the conspiracy stories just confirmed it in my mind that yes, we are free in America to discuss anything, we truly do have freedom of speech. I mean we have to be free or else the mean old PTB would shut all this down, wouldn't they?

They even help us with a site telling us how to spot misinformation
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jul/27-595713.html
You Are In: USINFO > Resource Tools > Identifying Misinformation

How to Identify Misinformation

How can a journalist or a news consumer tell if a story is true or false? There are no exact rules, but the following clues can help indicate if a story or allegation is true.

Does the story fit the pattern of a conspiracy theory?
Does the story fit the pattern of an “urban legend?”
Does the story contain a shocking revelation about a highly controversial issue?
Is the source trustworthy?
What does further research tell you?

But then a little whisper started, well how much more convenient it would be to just let everyone live in the illusion of freedom of speech and then if any real truth pops up to flood it with conspiracy theories and turn it into disinformation and junk.

We still don't know who killed JFK or MLK but a gazillion stories are out there. And everytime an incident happens, a hand picked commission tells us the "truth".

Jeff and others, I applaud what you are trying to do. But I have little hope.

I get my hope nowadays from children's movies and books, they are quite thought provoking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_dark_materials
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of novels by the fantasy fiction author Philip Pullman, comprising Northern Lights (released as The Golden Compass in North America and published in 1995), The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spyglass (2000). The trilogy has also been published as a single-volume omnibus in the United Kingdom and North America, titled simply His Dark Materials.

The trilogy follows the coming of age of two main characters, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a multiverse of parallel universes and a backdrop of epic events. The story begins in Northern Lights with fantasy elements such as witches and armoured bears. As the trilogy progresses, it acquires allegorical layers of meaning, introducing a broad range of ideas from fields such as physics (quantum physics), philosophy (metaphysics, philosophy of religion and, arguably, a degree of hylopathism), and theology (biblical symbolism).

Dust: Dark matter or dark energy; in the real world, particles which make up most of the mass of the universe, but which cannot be directly observed. The "Authority" in the dimension of Lyra's world believe that Dust or "High Energy Protons entering the atmosphere at earth's weakest link, her magnetic poles" respresents Original Sin and is the ancient war for our souls.

Original Sin!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials:_The_Golden_Compass
His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass is a forthcoming film based upon the first novel in Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, slated for release on December 7 2007 by New Line Cinema.[1] The story tells of Lyra's adventure to the far north in search of her friend. The movie title reflects the North American title of the novel The Golden Compass, known originally in the UK as Northern Lights. The project was announced in February 2002, following the success of other recent adaptations of fantasy epics, and at $150 million is expected to be New Line's biggest budget project ever after a series of box office disappointments in the past year.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin

According to Christian theology, original sin (also called ancestral sin, hereditary sin, birth sin, or person sin) is the fallen state of humanity. Western Christian tradition regards it as the general condition of sinfulness (lack of holiness) into which human beings are born. In the history of Christian dogma this condition has been characterized as something as insignificant as a slight deficiency to something as drastic as total depravity. Eastern Christian Tradition identifies Original Sin as physical and spiritual mortality[1], which in turn leads people to commit actual sins.

Used with the definite article ("the original sin"), it refers to the first sin, committed when Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent's temptation, commonly known as "the Fall". This first sin ("the original sin") is traditionally understood to be the cause of "original sin" (the fallen state of humanity).

While Christians cite references to original sin in the Old Testament (such as Psalm 51:5), the doctrine is not found in Jewish theology.

The Western tradition, both Catholic and Protestant, concerning original sin is largely based on writings by Augustine of Hippo, who famously concluded that unbaptized infants go to hell[2][3] because of original sin. The Latin Church Fathers who followed Augustine adopted his position, and it became a point of reference for Latin theologians in the Middle Ages.[4] In the later mediaeval period, some theologians continued to hold Augustine's view, others held that unbaptized infants suffered no pain at all: unaware of being deprived of the beatific vision, they enjoyed a state of natural, not supernatural happiness. Starting around 1300, unbaptized infants were often said to inhabit the "limbo of infants".[5]

The Roman Catholic Church has not adopted any of these beliefs as official doctrine or condemned them as heretical, leaving its members free to adopt them or reject them.[6]

Augustine's formulation of original sin was popular among Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, and also, within Roman Catholicism, in the Jansenist movement, but this movement was declared heretical by the Roman Catholic Church.[7] Today, conservative Protestants and Evangelicals are the most frequent proponents of the doctrine that original sin excludes even unbaptized infants and virtuous pagans from eternal life. Like other traditional church doctrines, original sin has been denied or reinterpreted by various modern Christian denominations (such as the Unity Church) and theologians (such as Matthew Fox).

By analogy the term "original sin" is used in fields other than religion to indicate a pervading inherent flaw.[8]

You can learn a lot from kids movies.

Movie Girl

6/03/2007 10:45:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Very nice, ericswan. I was digging through Part II of David Yarrow's Dragon tale (which echoes all that Lost Science stuff by Gerry Vassilatos and Joe Farrell’s occulted Nazi science, etc), when I came across this passage:

In Hermetic lore, Hermes Trismegistus slew the dragon Typhon—symbolizing Ignorance—using a special staff. This is the caduceus-an erect rod with eagle wings on top and two serpents coiling up its base. Later Hermes founded Egyptian medical science, and today his staff is still the symbol of doctors.

The Dragon, then, is winged serpent—union of eagle and snake. As such, Dragon symbolizes universal, collective consciousness-the mind of our cells wedded to rational intellect.

This is a challenging paradigm for scientists in search of Gaia. Or neurologists faced with the crucial question how neurons integrate to produce coherent brain function. Or ecologists, who wonder how independent organisms cooperate to maintain a stable biosphere that nurtures life.

Most scientists avoid exactly such questions, since science, by its very nature, isolates and analyzes fragments, not wholes. Even the few who persist to study bioelectromagnetism ignore such questions. This blindness of science is itself expressed in legends of dragonslayers—an ancient age of struggle between men and dragons.


For those who think this is just another internet phenomena, consider that science really does not understand electromagnetism, specifically in its relationship with biology & physics (gravity--the big secret). We do know that magnetism and light affect the formation of crystal structures and plant life—this is why Jaap Bax made all those extremely rigorous crystallography studies, to coax out an understanding of the morphology of life. What Bax was attempting was a reconciliation between mechanist reductionism (the foundation of Western science) and holism (the ancient method whereby the particular is seen in its relationship to the whole).

The reason that science is so defensive, so disdainful toward this "other" way of seeing is two-fold. One part of this is a profound embarrassment and smugness—its inability to acknowledge the fact that “primitives” might have understood Nature better than they. Dan Moonhawk Alford describes this with an acid clarity in The Great Whorf Hypothesis Hoax :

I suspect that they fear, and rightly so, that the entire Western worldview -- logic, reason, science, philosophy, categories -- the entire 'civilization' enterprise of which academia is a part, in fact, is at stake; or at least the superior attitude that often accompanies it. It may be a fear that what we're culturally heir to is 'just another worldview and its langscapes' rather than exemplifying, as we tend to want to believe, eternal and universal human logic, which we're simply 'better at' than people who speak other languages outside of the Indo-European language family. As John Lucy says, (linguistic) relativity "challenges assumptions which lie at the heart of much modern social and behavior research -- namely its claim to be discovering general laws and to be truly scientific."(3)

Underlying this perhaps unintendedly deceptive scholarship and public reporting is a deep fear that the logic of Western European languages doesn't really match the logic of reality after all, or that it's only one of many that are equally true -- a bitter pill to swallow for those raised on the 'natural' superiority of Western European thinking over that of less 'civilized' indigenous peoples. I hesitate to call this 'racist,' since I really can't get behind a term less than a hundred years old with this meaning which has done nothing but needlessly further divide humanity (religion and place of origin have always been enough to pit people against each other sufficiently), but it can at the very least be called colonializing -- part of the 'superior' colonialistic mindset which has been wreaking havoc on the Americas for over 500 years: beginning with a sad history of physical slavery for this continent's original inhabitants, moving on to 'civilized' economic slavery in a reservation system, culminating in cognitive imperialism, the last stage of cultural imperialism, with Indian children being kidnapped by the federal government and sent to 'English-only' boarding schools thousands of miles away from their families in order to destroy Native culture, knowledge and languages.


The other part of science’s inability to look beyond its nose is because it is not its own master—the entire scientific orthodoxy is beholden to and in the service of The Empire. Is it an insignificant factoid that more than half of our scientists work directly for the military-industrial complex? Can we really believe that their work, paid for and directed by those corporations and institutes who are their bosses, is an objective search for truth in the service of mankind? We may be gullible, but we’re not that stupid!

One clue about the truth of my point here is the secrecy which we find at every level of the enterprise of science. If science were objective and open-minded, why would there be so much secrecy surrounding certain “sensitive” subjects? Here’s an example that brings us right back to ericswan’s Dragon. Remember when Jeff was talking about the Gerry Irwin/Fort Bliss saga in his Outside the Box post? Well, he gave us a Wiki Paperclip link ("Here's a class picture of Fort Bliss's German rocket team…") which led to another Wiki page, which in turn has a link to C. Lester Walker’s famous "Secrets By The Thousands" article in Harper's Magazine. (October 1946).

This article is of interest here because it highlights the problem of secrecy--actually, an instance of the collusion between the M-I complex and their lapdog scientists--and because it shows The Lie for what it is. Walker talks glowingly about how the government has promised to make all the patents they “liberated” from I.G. Farben available to the public and to help implement the scientific advances contained therein through its “partnership” with industry. Problem is…the access to these patents was severely restricted from the very beginning. Anything that would challenge the raw materials regime, the monopoly that dictates how we make things, etc, was simply never released at all. In an example that brings us right back to ericswan’s EM page, we have this description of an industrial process the Nazi scientists developed to manufacture mica, a highly critical wartime material during WWII:

...Mica was another thing. None is mined in Germany, so during the war our Signal Corps was mystified. Where was Germany getting it?

One day a certain piece of mica was handed to one of our experts in the U.S. Bureau of Mines for analysis and opinion. Natural mica, he reported, and no impurities.

But the mica was synthetic. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Silicate Research had discovered how to make it and something which had always eluded scientists-in large sheets.

We know now, thanks to FIAT teams, that ingredients of natural mica were melted in crucibles of carbon capable of taking 2,350 degrees of heat, and then-this was the real secret-cooked in a special way. Complete absence of vibration was the first essential. Then two forces directly perpendicular to each other were applied. One, vertically, was a controlled gradient of temperature in the cooling. At right angles to this, horizontally, was introduced a magnetic field. This forced the formation of the crystals in large laminated sheets on that plane...


So...the German tentacle of the Octopus was doing this stuff 60, 70 years ago and...the technology just disappears? No interest from the hallowed halls of science? It’s bullshit, plain & simple (obviously), but what’s even more interesting is the reinforced bulwark of denial--the hired guns of the propaganda ministry. You have goons like The Amazing Randi and The Skeptic and Daniel Pouzzner (who are all funded by and/or have connections with Wall Street, the intelligence community, etc.) who “debunk” the wild-eyed claims of “internet shucksters” (a class that includes anyone who is wild enough to suggest that we might use our technical expertise to help mankind instead of The Bottom Line), and yet they never, ever question the official story about anything.

Pouzzner, for example, has written more than a few articles for the Wall Street Journal attacking those who question “America’s right to defend its interests”. Never is the question raised whether the Owners’ definition of what those “interests” are might differ from ours, or, even more importantly, through what democratic process this definition was produced. Did we vote on this? Any of it?

The recent blowback resulting from Ron Paul’s blasphemous ejaculation of the notion of blowback to explain 9/11 at the FoxNews Republican Torture Convention was most telling, in that it exposed a weakness, a chink in the Empire’s armor. After all, how to explain our freedom-loving ways, our global benevolence, when incidents like this one keep getting remembered, despite the effort that’s gone into helping us forget:

1984

The Associated Press discloses a 90-page CIA-produced training manual called “Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare” providing the contras with instruction on political assassinations, blackmailing, mob violence, kidnappings and blowing up public buildings, and calling for “implicit terror.” [
Central Intelligence Agency, n.d.; Associated Press, 10/17/1984; CNN, 2/21/1999]

(from the History of US Interventions , Nicaragua (1979-) )

ericswan, Tommy Cichanowski lists some more stuff on the B-12 mystery at his many-layered Tortoise Shell site, along with a great excerpt from Gerry Vassilatos' Lost Science--Chapter 5 Ultra Microscopes and Cure Rays: Dr. R. Raymond Rife, which gets into both the nature of waves in the nature of nature and the fraud that is the AMA...


Movie Girl,

Despair not, bright flower child--your Sound of Music suite is right there, pegging the golden vibe, just like Rife & Tesla & Russell & Schauberger, etc, etc--find further inspiration and connection, instead of giving in to the dreary fate prepared for us. Here are a few such:

The Politics of Consciousness and the Consciousness of Politics (a massive resource for like-minded folks of your [our] persuasion from the Rainbowbody Network where you’ll find tons of Indigenous Resurgence material, as well as stuff like this: In the Vale of Soul-Making--Rupert Sheldrake and Matthew Fox--The soul is not in the body but the body is in the soul: A Dialogue, and Healthy and Vital Politics: The Power of Love Against Fear and Hatred -- Healing Against Harm.

You’ll enjoy a section of that last spiel called Rewriting Recent History: The Sixties- Learning from Past Mistakes, even though Shrub chastised you for reprinting that Morford piece—ericswan drubbed me over the head for linking it as well, but there is truth in it. It’s just a matter of separating the spirit that informed the movement from the leaders who sold it out. For that matter, you’d also like what Albert Bates is doing, I think (just ignore his continued use of Peak Oil terminology). Do you know about the Farm?

Anyway, hunt around in those Rainbowbody Network links and trust your instincts—they’re spot on.

Oh, yeah, a few more wavy, resonant pieces:

Walter Russell's Musical Universe & Tesla's "tele-geodynamics"...it's too bad Jeff doesn't let us put some images up here, too; we'd really be seeing things.

Thanks again, ericswan, for that Yarrow link!

6/03/2007 05:17:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

6/03/2007 06:13:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Thanks Jeff, the second to last paragraph I found to be especially appropriate.

IC,

Hough need not argue the distance bit. There would be nothing gained and it might distract from Hough's alternative explanation.

I don't go for the extra-dimensional bit myself, (or the speed of light limitation)
Both seem like ways to keep distance from other elements of existence.

But, if it helps him slip the noose; -more power to him.

Plenty of room right here for stuff that while fundamentally the same, nonetheless interacts very little because of wide variation in frequencies of fundamental elements.

6/03/2007 06:15:00 PM  
Blogger surrender said...

This is extremely disturbing news, and even though I do not live in the US now, it seems that Americans are facing a multitude of grievious and overwhelming circumstances.


ALTERNET NEWS: JUNE 1, 2007

"Bush has issued a directive that would place all governmental powers in his hands in the case of a catastrophic emergency. If a terrorist attack happens before the 2008 election, could Bush and Cheney use this to avoid relinquishing power to a successor administration?


As the nation focused on whether Congress would exercise its constitutional duty to cut funding for the war, Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media.

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, would place all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish the checks and balances in the Constitution.

If a "catastrophic emergency" -- which could include a terrorist attack or a natural disaster -- occurs, Bush's new directive says: "The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government."

What about the other two co-equal branches of government? The directive throws them a bone by speaking of a "cooperative effort" among the three branches, "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers." The Vice-President would help to implement the plans.

"Comity," however, means courtesy, and the President would decide what kind of respect for the other two branches of government would be "proper." This Presidential Directive is a blatant power grab by Bush to institutionalize "the unitary executive."

(to be continued..........)

6/03/2007 09:05:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

6/04/2007 01:29:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A piece of American history.

War Parties.

Very likely Indian tribes in early times fought and killed men because of quarrels in angry dispute over what each party considered its rights. Their wars were probably not general, nor could they have been very bloody. When, however, horses came into the possession of the Indians, all this must have soon become changed. Hitherto there had really been no incentive to war. From time to time expeditions may have gone out to kill enemies, for glory, or to take revenge for some injury, but war had not yet been made desirable by the hope of plunder, for none of their neighbors any more than themselves had property which was worth capturing and taking away. But when horses became known, and the Indians began to realize what a change the possession of these animals was working in their mode of life, when they saw that, by enormously increasing the transporting power of each family, horses made far greater possessions practicable, that they insured the food supply, rendered the moving of the camp easier and more rapid, made possible long journeys with a minimum of effort, and that they had a value for trading, the Blackfoot mind received a new idea, the idea that it was desirable to accumulate property.

Now began a systematic sending forth of war parties agaisnt neighboring tribes for the purpose of capturing horses. Horse-taking at once became what might be called an established industry among the Blackfeet. Success brought wealth and fame, and there was a pleasing excitement about the war journey. Except during the bitterest weather of the winter, war parties of Blackfeet were constantly out, searching for camps of their enemies, from whom they might capture horses. Usually the only object of such an expedition was to secure plunder, but often enemies were killed, and sometimes the party set out with the distinct intention of taking both scalps and horses.

The Gros Ventre of the prairie, of Arapaho stock, known to the Backfeet as Atsena, or Gut People, had been friends and allies of the Blackfeet from the time they first came into the country, in the early 1800's, up to about 1862, when peace was broken through a mistake. A war party of Snakes had gone to a Gros Ventre camp near the Bear Paw Mountains and there killed two Gros Ventre and taken a white pony, which they subsequently gave to a party of Piegan whom they met, and whom they made peace. The Gros Ventres afterward saw this horse in the Piegan camp and supposed that the latter had killed their tribesman, and this led to a long war. In the year 1867, the Piegan defeated the allied Crow and Gros Ventre in a great battle near the Cypress Mountains, in which about 450 of the enemy are said to have been killed.

Women and children of hostile tribes were often captured, and adopted into the Blackfoot tribes with all the rights and priviledges of indigenous members. Men were rarely captured. When they were taken, they were sometimes killed in cold blood, especially if they had made a desperate resistance before being captured. At other times, the captive would be kept for a time, and then the chief would take him off away from the camp, and give him provisions, clothing, arms, and a horse, and let him go. Often the man who had taken him prisoner had great trouble to keep his tribesmen from killing him.

In the very early days of the 1800's, war parties used commonly to start out in the spring, going south to the land where horses were abundant, being absent all summer and the next winter, and returning the following summer or autumn, with great bands of horses. That they did get as far as Mexico, or at least New Mexico, is indicated by the fact that they brought back branded horses and a few mules, for in these early days there was no stock upon the Plains, and animals bearing brands were found only in the Spanish American settlements.

It is said, too, that there have been war parties who have crossed the mountains and gone so far to the west that they have seen the big salt water which lies beyond, or west of, the Great Salt Lake. War party journeys as far south as Salt Lake were not uncommon.

taken from the internet site Access Genealogy. Indian Tribal Records. Blackfeet Tribe in War.

6/04/2007 03:57:00 AM  
Blogger muddy elephant said...

IC: not sure what your question was referring to...
but anyways, thanks for feeding us with your Hari Seldon-esque knowledge.

6/04/2007 04:26:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Quoted above:

An estimated 40 percent of cancers worldwide can be prevented by exercise, eating healthy foods and not using tobacco, according to the World Health Organization.

They can additionally be prevented by stopping the ongoing activities of the WHO and 'rogue U.N.'

These are the organizations, sadly enough that are "planning" on these mass cancer deaths. They want to remove (documented in their own documents, linked below) 3 billion people through 'benign neglect.'

Thus take any media play from talking heads of these people as a huge crocodile tear.

I would mistrust media play from these organizations given their stated policy documents below.

I discuss this a bit here, and you can watch a video or two for yourself on it.

The Bioregional State's Bodily Integrity Principle Vs. Codex Alimentarius' WTO Vitamin Police

Benjamin Rush on the Despotism of the Vitamin Police

American Founding Father Benjamin Rush wanted medical freedom as a basic human right in the U.S. Constitution, arguing that "Unless we put Medical Freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship . . .[T]o restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and deny equal privilege to others, will be to constitute the Bastille of Medical Science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a Republic....The Constitution of this Republic should make special privilege for Medical Freedom as well as Religious Freedom."

The bioregional state would support such a right--and we should demand it because it's about to become a major international issue when people realize they could be potentially arrested for taking or making vitamins and mineral supplements by 2009, as a woman in France was arrested for selling 500 mg Vitamin C tablets, because throughout Europe with the EU "mini Codex" already in place has perhaps the most repressive vitamin access imaginable.

...

HERE ARE THE LINKS [from link above] to these two documentaries on Codex Alimentarius:

1.

We Become Silent - The Last Days Of Health Freedom
28 min 37 sec - Apr 6, 2006

International award-winning filmmaker Kevin P. Miller of Well TV announced the release of a new documentary about the threat to medical freedom of choice. 'We Become Silent: The Last Days of Health Freedom' details the ongoing attempts by multinational pharmaceutical interests and giant food companies--in concert with the WTO, the WHO and others--to limit the public’s access to herbs, vitamins and other therapies. 'We Become Silent’ is narrated by Dame Judi Dench, the noted UK actress who has won multiple Golden Globe awards, an Oscar, and a Tony for her on-stage work, in addition to dozens of other honors throughout her prestigious career.

..

2.

Nutricide - Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and Herbs
Natural Solutions Foundation - 40 min - Sep 2, 2006 -

The Codex Alimentarius is a threat to the freedom of people to choose natural healing and alternative medicine and nutrition. Ratified by the World Health Organization, and going into Law in the United States in 2009, the threat to health freedom has never been greater. This is the first part of a series of talks by Dr. Rima Laibow, MD, available on DVD from the Natural Solutions Foundation, an non-profit organization dedicated to educating people about how to stop Codex Alimentarius from taking away our right to freely choose nutritional health.


...

Conclusion: HARMonization

Benjamin Rush was very prescient. What we are facing worldwide in the Codex is an "undercover dictatorship. . .to restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and deny equal privilege to others, [which] will be to constitute the Bastille of Medical Science."

And who are the major players pressing for this--those corporations descended from Nazi Germany's I.G. Farben. (With a caveat that it has some religious tangential information and interpretation, all this is well cited history at this book.)

And what do the WHO (World Health Organization, so called) and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) expect to come of the implementation of their Codex Alimentarius outlawing of vitamins and mineral supplements, forced irradiation of all crops, reintroduction of a handful of already banned (for health reasons) terrible persistent organic chemical toxins?

3 billion deaths
1 billion through starvation


[Thus, the U.N. and WTO are about to 'out Hitler' the Third Reich]

...

Add that this "one class of men", unelected and seemingly set on killing billions of people ("hey we just report it folks, it's [in their own documents and] documented") further want to restrict medical practice to one class of health commodities--that they alone sell, while they outlaw all others--and you have it.

The suspicious mass death of microbiologists globally over the past several years probably has something to do with this 'sick' 2009 timetable as well.

And it all comes about so far because of the lack of rights formally established for health freedom choice.

...

http://biostate.blogspot.com/2007/01/bioregional-states-bodily-integrity.html

6/04/2007 07:54:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Richard,

Why did you remove your post? I thought it was excellent and spot on. I, myself, wondered why Jeff was attempting to foist that trope about the Cheney End Run Around Bush....and there is definitely something fishy about Bush's friends making derogatory comments to the press about him.

Movie Girl,

No harm done....in fact, I do tend to be an ogre every now and then, both on the Net, and at home.....but with many layers, as Shrek opines (I hate the Shrek movies, by the way). I also agree with a lot of what you posit....and I enjoy your posts.

IC & Mark,

Excellent posts....you guys amaze me with your inexhaustible wellspring of information. It keeps me busy. I finally finished Internal Combustion....it was an excellent compilation, overflowing with solid facts. It depressed me, though.....I'll explain later when and if I find the time.

I love this place....it's where I go to stay informed these days.

6/04/2007 12:01:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Shrub. I don't really know. Lack of sleep due to too many work hours logged I suppose. I feel like someone's stuffed my skull full of cotten balls.

I do appreciate the kind words my friend & I aplogize for being pissed off at my own ramblings.
This morning, while re-reading it,I just felt like I was re-stating the obvious to a bunch of folk who probably knew it already.

Like I said, a skull full of cotten balls.

While we're on the subject, I've noticed that your 2 cents have been sadly lacking around here lately.

I hope you're not making that a habit.

6/04/2007 01:11:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Where to start? Muddy, I guess, then: thanks, in a left-handed kind of way (to the Hari Seldon compliment). I did like Hari, even though I disagreed with both the premise of PsychoHistory and with Azimov's dogmatism. Ever notice that Foundation is built around an empire, an essentially benevolent despotism that is the only (for Azimov) safeguard against the anarchy of Nature? Still, I respect the old man, much as I do Larry Niven, even though his hard science fiction leaves much to be desired. The one exception would be The Mote in God's Eye, where he really went beyond his own limitations.

Both of those "giants" are not match for some of the new imagineers, of course, folks like Vernor Vinge, Rudy Rucker, Ken MacLeod, Charlie Stross, etc. These guys are able to think beyond the imperial dance of money, you see. Back then (the '40s to the '70s) the only ones capable of it were Philp Jose Farmer, P.K. Dick and U.K. LeGuin.

It's interesting that you quote that passage from the end of The Stranger--my comment was in reference to the news last summer that Camus was on The Leader's vacation reading list, which we talked about here (it's very strange looking back on that conversation; at how little/how much has changed. Where has starroute gone?)


Mark,

Sorry not to get back to you on the intrigue among the air car guys story--that link from Answers.com was updated & changed. It had to do with some sort of espionage between the French & the Uruguayans, I believe. Did you happen to hear, btw, the piece of crap story National Corporate Radio did on Tata's air car? Called it a "step backward"--their experts talked about it must be some kind of "stripped-down 4 cylinder that uses carburetors which no one has even seen in 20 years". What buffoons! One link that explains how stupid these mouth organs of the State are is here.


surrender,

Too scary by half.

Sounder,

Very sorry not to reply to your emails yet--I just finally read the old messages today. A decent reply is forthcoming. Promise.

6/04/2007 04:14:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Thanks, from that link, an expected annual production of only 9,000 or so a year from that factory, eh? I bet people will be falling over each other to get those.

Fascinating the U.S. "public radio" takes out an advertisement against it, eh? Who got the word to them so quickly about that? Though let's recall (at least on the public television) it's always brought to us by "The ExxonMobil Corporation", etc.

Paint up this air car and it would look like Pikachu. Both are non-oil powered....

air car:
http://www.gizmag.com/go/7000/picture/32536/

Pikachu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikachu

6/04/2007 05:42:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

It's interesting that NCR (National Corporate Radio) spins it's "going backward." Actually, from a video I have seen I can't find now, they interviewed Jimmy Carter who was glumly noting that we're more backward on miles per gallon for oil vehicles over the past 30 years, from where he was in the late 1970s. Here's some text about the video I can't find about MPG regression over the Reagan-Bush(es) era.

"Carter insisted that U.S. automakers build more fuel-efficient cars, with a goal of 27.5 miles per gallon over the following decade - a requirement passed under Gerald Ford but put into force by Carter.

He offered incentives for getting oil from shale, creating a boom initially in the Rockies - and a bust when it failed to be cost-effective. He offered deductions for using solar water heaters in homes and commercial buildings.

"People in the upper-income bracket were always looking for tax cuts. They were going to build a house anyhow, so they were saying, 'Well let's look at this solar stuff and see what we can do,' " said Marc Giaccardo, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio who at the time was an Albuquerque architect.

Carter even had solar collectors installed on the White House grounds to heat the executive residence's water.

Then Carter lost re-election to Ronald Reagan in 1980. The solar panels at the White House eventually came down - and Reagan and his aides gutted the solar research program.

"In June or July of 1981, on the bleakest day of my professional life, they descended on the Solar Energy Research Institute, fired about half of our staff and all of our contractors, including two people who went on to win Nobel prizes in other fields, and reduced our $130 million budget by $100 million," recalls Denis Hayes, the founder of Earth Day, who had been hired by Carter to spearhead the solar initiative.

Reagan and Congress stopped aggressively pushing new auto efficiency standards, acceding to Detroit's desire to leave them at Carter-era levels. They let the solar tax benefit expire, and the nascent solar industry went belly- up.

It was time to let the markets work their magic [sic] and stop all this government tinkering, Reagan and conservatives said. [instead to massively subsidize and run up debt on military arms instead, the so called fiscal conservatives (not) taking the U.S. from lender to debtor nation for the first time in its history in the 1980s.]

Bad stuff? A recipe for the fix we're in today?

A number of environmentalists and conservationists say so.

Although the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards already were saving 3 million barrels a day, "they could be saving us a further 3 million or 4 million barrels a day" if they had been ramped up, says Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global-warming project.

That would be enough to compensate for Katrina or for disruptions in supply from Venezuela and Nigeria in the last year or so, Becker says. "We could be saving more oil than we now import from the Persian Gulf had the government acted to raise the fuel economy."

Every president since Carter has refused or been obstructed by Congress - which is lobbied by automakers and unions that fear losing jobs. When Americans want sheer size, they buy American, but when they want fuel efficiency, they tend to buy Japanese.

Meantime the nation began its love affair with sport utility vehicles, which are classified as light trucks, not automobiles, and [through the alchemy of laws escape the car classification only mileage requirements, that's why they started to mass produce trucks which are currently a bit over 50% of the vehicles on the U.S. roads, and thus] have a lower standard of 20.7 miles to the gallon. That's scheduled to go up [sic] to 22.2 miles per gallon by 2007."


..which is still way lower than standards 30 years ago that had eroded.

6/04/2007 06:05:00 PM  
Blogger muddy elephant said...

IC: Thanks for the backround--an intersting old thread to read--it certainly has a few years left on its shelf life of relevance.

As for your question: It appears to be one of those, um, synchronicities. Consciously I did not have Dubya in mind--but it seemed that Camus was somehow relevant to Jeff's welcome incisions into the bloody corpus of political dogma.

It might be kind of interesting to theorize about Bush's inner mental/psychological landscape. And I really haven't the slightest idea what the hell the guy is thinking (everyone likes art for their own reasons--which, I believe are oftentimes hidden to themselves).

But for the sake of speculation I'll casually drop this notion: the man is no Christian, his deepest held beliefs are a malignant perversion in reaction to "the benign indifference of the universe." Ho-hum.

Maybe my mind is partly stuck in a P.K. Dick time bubble dating back to last August.

Or, maybe there is something going on with the fluoride in my water... ;)

6/04/2007 07:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Enough waffle!
Desideratum !
Egregious Funambulist!
This serendipitous disinterment irrefragably engenders heuristic cogitation, elucidation and veracity.
Ovine velleity, thewless descant, miscreant concatenation, pavid vilification and temerarious calumniations immure syncretism.
Your histrionic hegemony and ecumenical sanctimony, prone to paroxysm and catatonia, where harrowing gerontocracies, obscuring sciosophy and obsequious vassals of sequacious polysyllogism reign with conniving venality, ostentatious dissimulation and pertinacious recusancy to perpetuate chimerical monstrosities, global imbroglios, neurotic fragmentation and psychotic armamentation, portend omnifarious cataclysm.
Axiomatic reconnoitering necessitates exigent circumspection, perspicacious equanimity and sedulous cogency to abjure ubiquitous beguilement, nugatory mellifluous prolixity and apophthegmatic condescendence.
Scrutators hearken, descry and reintegrate, ameliorate nescience, titivate desultory proclivities, recalcitrate paralogism, succour pusillanimous tiros and eschew logomachy.
Aquarian conspirators know nomology, my theanthropic cognation, numinous propinquity, propitious ataraxia, impending chiliad of benevolence and eclectic meritocracy.
I am endogenous, adumbrating pulchritudinous you.
Am I??

6/04/2007 09:10:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hope that this word list,whilst not in a very clear format, is of some help to that last post.

desideratum something wanted or needed
egregious distinguished or eminent
funambulist a tightrope walker serendipity faculty of making desirable but unsought for discoveries by accident disinterment to bring from obscurity into view
irrefragably not to be refuted; undeniable
engenders to cause; give rise to; to produce
heuristic serving to find out; to further invest
cogitation ponder; devise; think hard;
meditate; a thought elucidation to make lucid or clear; throw light upon; explain
veracity conformity to truth or fact
ovine pertaining to, of the nature of, sheep velleity a mere wish, unaccompanied be real effort to attain
thewless without vigour or energy descant a variation upon anything; comment on
miscreant depraved; villainous; base concatenation a series of interconnected or interdependent things or events pavid frightened; fearful; timid
vilification to speak evil of; defame; traduce; deprecate; slander; malign; disparage temerarious reckless; rash; daring calumniation to make false statements about; slander immure to enclose within walls; to shut in; to imprison; confine; fortify;
syncretism the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion histrionic artificial; theatrical
hegemony leadership or predominant influence exercised by one state over another
ecumenical general; universal sanctimony pretended, affected, or hypocritical holiness or devoutness prone having a natural tendency or inclination to something; disposed to; liable paroxysm any sudden, violent outburst; a fit of violent emotion
catatonia a syndrome seem most frequently in schizophrenia, with muscular rigidity and mental stupor, sometimes alternating with great excitement and confusion
harrowing disturbing or distressing to the mind, feeling, etc.
gerontocracies government by old men obscuring not clear or plain; uncertain, etc.
sciosophy a system of pretended knowledge usually based on tradition or the like, and not on known fact obsequious servilely compliant or overly deferential
vassal a servant or slave sequacious following another person unreasonably
polysyllogism logic-a number of syllogisms arranged in a series so that the conclusion of one (prosyllogism) serves as the premise of another (an episyllogism)
reign dominating power or influence conniving to avoid noticing that which one should oppose or condemn but secretly approves; give aid to wrongdoing
venality ready to sell ones services or influence unscrupulously; accessible to bribery; corruptly mercenary; prostitution of talents or principles for money or reward
ostentatious characteristics by or given to pretentious show dissimulation feigning, hypocrisy pertinacious persistent, holding tenaciously to a purpose, course of action, or opinion recusancy refusing to submit or comply; obstinate refusal or opposition
perpetuate to make perpetual; preserve from oblivion chimerical unreal; imaginary
monstrosities frightful or hideous; extremely ugly; deviating greatly from the natural form or type global pertaining to or covering the whole world; all-embracing
imbroglio an intricate and perplexing state of affairs; a complicated or difficult situation; a confused heap neurotic an emotional disorder involving feelings of anxiety, obsessional thoughts, compulsive acts and physical complaints
fragmentation the disintegration or breakdown of norms of thought, behaviour,social relationship or structure psychotic any major, severe form of mental affection or disease
armamentation the weapons with which military units, airplanes, vehicles or warships are equipped portend an indication or omen of something about to happen, esp. something momentous omnifarious of all forms, varieties or kinds
cataclysm any violent upheaval axiomatic an established and universally accepted principle or rule reconnoitering to inspect, observe or survey the enemy's strength, position, etc., in order to gain information for military or other strategic purposes; to make a reconnaissance necessitates obliges, forces, compels exigent requiring immediate action or aid; urgent; pressing; requiring a great deal circumspection watchful on all sides; cautious; prudent; well considered perspicacious having keen mental perception; discerning
equanimity evenness of mind or temper; calmness; composure sedulous diligent in application or attention; persevering; persistently or carefully maintained cogency power of proving or producing belief; convincing force abjure to renounce or repudiate; retract; esp. with solemnity ubiquitous being everywhere at the same time; omnipresence
beguilement to mislead; delude; to charm or divert nugatory trifling; of no real value; worthless; of no force or effect; futile; vain mellifluous sweetly or smoothly flowing; flowing with honey prolixity extended to great, unnecessary, or tedious length; long and wordy apophthegmatic a short, pithy, instructive saying; a terse remark or aphorism condescendence to waive ceremony voluntarily and assume equality with an inferior scrutator one who investigates hearken to listen; to give heed or attend to what is said descry to discover; perceive; detect reintegrate to make whole again; restore to a perfect state; re-new; re-establish ameliorate to make or become better; improve nescience lack of knowledge; ignorance; agnosticism
titivate to make smart or spruce desultory disconnected; unmethodical; fitful; random proclivity natural or habitual inclination or tendency; propensity; predisposition recalcitrate to make resistance or opposition; show strong objection or repugnance paralogism a piece of false or fallacious reasoning, esp. one of whose falseness the reasoner is not conscious succour help; relief; aid; assistance pusillanimous lacking strength of mind or courage; faint hearted; cowardly tiros beginners in learning anything; novices eschew to abstain from; shun; avoid logomachy contention about words, or in which words are used as verbiage, regardless or their true meaning aquarian the eleventh sign of the zodiac, the water-bearer conspirators to agree together, esp. secretly, to do some reprehensible or illegal; combine for an evil or unlawful purpose know to perceive or understand as fact or truth, or apprehend with clearness and certainty; to be cognizant or aware of
nomology the science of the laws of the mind theanthropic of or pertaining to both God and man; both divine and human cognation of the same parentage, descent, etc; related in origin; allied in nature or quality numinous evincing the presence of deity; arousing elevated or religious feeling propinquity nearness of relation; kinship; affinity of nature; similarity propitious presenting favourable conditions; favourable ataraxia state of tranquility, free from emotional disturbance and anxiety impending about to happen; imminent chiliad a thousand years benevolence desire to do good for others; goodwill; charitableness
eclectic selecting what seems best from various styles or ideas; not following any one system, but selecting and using whatever is considered best in all systems meritocracy persons collectively who have reached positions of authority by reason of real or supposed merit endogenous growing or proceeding from within; originating within adumbrating to give a faint shadow or resemblance of; to foreshadow; prefigure; overshadow pulchritudinous beautiful - that quality of appearance which pleases the eye; beauty; comeliness; grace; loveliness; attractive moral excellence

Familiarize, imbue and concatenate
Find out: who or what am "I" ?
Am I wanted and/or needed?
Then let me be.
I am yours,Truly.


Source; Hamlyn Encyclopaedic World Dictionary

6/04/2007 09:21:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Inspired by hearing the FBI spokeswomen say, while talking about the recent JFK "terror" plot, "If this plot would have gone through at JFK, it would have been like killing the man a second time," I spent a bit of my off day today reading what I could about said plot.
Something about her comment rubbed me the wrong way. I suppose it's the shadow governments compulsion to not be content with just executing their nefarious bullshit, they also have to stick their tongues out at us & go, "Nyah, nyah, nyah," while they're doing it.
The best reporting, by far, that I've seen today
is over at Cannonfire.

I'm going to give a bit here, but you owe it to yourself to read the whole tangled tale.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/06/terror-plot-suspect-worked-for-cias.html

"The afore-cited Newsday piece gives this account of Russell DeFreitas' employment history:
[New York City Police Commissioner Ray] Kelly said Defreitas last worked at Kennedy in 1995 as a baggage handler with a subsidiary of Evergreen International Airlines Inc., an airline services company based in McMinnville, Ore. Kelly said Defreitas was unemployed and lived alone.
[Emphasis added.] Oddly enough, the chronology is contradicted by another Newsday story -- a profile of DeFreitas -- which reports:
Defreitas was hired by a cargo transportation company at Kennedy Airport, Watts said. Documents show he was employed as a "trainee supervisor" in 2001 with Evergreen Eagle, a subsidiary of Oregon-based Evergreen International Aviation. Officials there declined to comment.
When in 2001? After September 11? More to the point, was he a baggage handler or a supervisor?

All of this is of no small importance, for one simple reason:

Evergreen is CIA.

Of all the airlines used by the CIA -- and they have used many -- Evergreen has the closest, most longstanding ties to the agency. So close are they that we may fairly say that the two entities are kept separate only by a polite legal fiction.

This is not a questioned fact. This is not "tin foil hat" speculation.

For example, this San Diego Union Tribune story (on a non-political subject) refers to "Evergreen Airlines – the CIA's (contract) airline that replaced Air America of the Vietnam era." A number of respected books on the Agency refer to Evergreen as the CIA's airline. Also see this fascinating affidavit by a pilot who became involved with these operations.

Evergreen aircraft have, it seems, been used for "extraordinary renditions" (the transport of captured prisoners for torture): See here and here.

I have elsewhere argued that, in many cases, these flights make more sense if viewed as smuggling operations, as opposed to "torture flights." Although CIA aircraft have undeniably carried prisoners to remote locations for grisly interrogation, the pattern suggests that many of these flights have another purpose. (If that suggestion seems outlandish at first blush, I can only beg you to read my earlier piece before offering judgment.)

In short and in sum: The CIA has long been accused of using Evergreen for smuggling purposes. (I do not here refer, necessarily, to drugs. The CIA must often transport all sorts of items which it would prefer not to pass through customs.)

Thus, it is of great importance to determine just what DeFreitas did while working -- in essence -- for the CIA. The disparate and contradictory reports of his tenure and job title are suspicious in and of themselves."


& I have a question for anyone who will answer:

Was Willie Ley an ex-Nazi?

I've found only 2 sentences on 2 different websites saying as much, but no real detail.

The reason I'm asking is about 10 days ago I was browsing through a local used book store & found a box of old sci-fi pulps.
An issue of Galaxy for April 1956 had a cover story entitled 'Let's Build an Extraterrestrial" by Willie Ley.

Given Mr. Well's view that some "UFO's" are "techno-occult" creations of the military-industrial-Nazi complex, I find this incredibly curious.

You can view a photo of the Galaxy cover here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sci-Fi-CANVAS-Print-Galaxy-Mag-Build-a-Extraterrestrial_W0QQitemZ270092152760QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

6/04/2007 11:49:00 PM  
Blogger John Kirby said...

Jeff,

I love ya, pal, but for crying out loud-- enough trashing WTC 7 theories and Dylan Avery. I am absolutely astounded that you are not convinced-- despite the new "police helicopter" footage of "ten missing floors" and Larry Silverstein's much belated explanation of "pull it"-- that at the very least 7 came down by means of explosive charges.

It falls from the damn penthouse, for chrissake, you can SEE it. "Money trails", Norman Minetta's planted testimony to provide the alt. explanation of a "shootdown" for 93 ("ooh, that must be what they're coviering up!")--of course Mr. Minetta would not have been selected for a cabinet post during this critical phase if his discretion could not be relied upon. Think for a moment: Why would some Jr. Staffer be confronting the VP in so dramatic-- and later, funny enough, public--a fashion about an standard operating procedure?
And just where is the wreckage of 93, anyway? Have you ever seen it?


I highly reccoment this site for those of you who haven't found it already. http://www.patriotsquestion911.com

It includes military personnel who are at the very least highly skeptical and at the most utterly condemning of the Commsion Report, etc., though it also incudes disinfo plants like Clarke and Minetta.

Among the ones highly condemning are many who argue convincingly, based on their real world expertise, that there should have been a larger hole and actual debris around the Pentagon. Ditto in Shanksville. Ditto for the flight skills, and on and on.

This is all stuff you've gone out of your way to weaken the force of, Jeff, and while I would be laothee to denounce you, I have to wonder "why?".

And why cast despersions on people who specualte about the moon hoax and directed energy weapons when I have read with great interest so many speculative and even literally presented accounts of "interdimensional encounters" and god knows what else on your post?

I am interested in your accounts and theorizing of interdimesionality because you seem to be honestly curious and open minded about such things. And while you are an above average political commentor, especially where the "high weirdness" is concerned, and your intution is always insightful, I am afraid you do not have an advanced understanding of American politcal history or the nature of the American Intellignce community.

For an education in the former, I highly reccomend to everyone Walter Karp's "Indisepnsible Enemies". It provides irrefutable evidence of collusion between the two parties, both to win and lose elections on each other's behalf and to block reform. He shows Roosevelt doing everything in his power to block the progress of the New Deal, including passing over the heads of the young insurgent (ie non-party controlled) Democratic congressmen the worst Social Security bill he possibly could-- i.e. a tax taken directly from the paychecks of those who will collect and one whose rate doesn't rise after $80,000 or so of annual income.

Karp also makes clear the mechanism behind an intuition of mine from back in 2000: namely, that the election wasn't "stolen" at all in any meaningful sense, it was merely uncontested. It had to appear as though it was stolen, as this would further cover over proofs of two-party collusion which the public periodically comes to suspect in embarssing numbers.

They love it when people declaim "anybody but Bush!" "he stole the election", etc. Watergate served the same purpose. It made the party oligarchs appear to be deeply at odds with each other, going to any lengths to win (bugging the other teams headquarters, oh boy!) And of course the sacrifice of Nixon for the sins of the Vietnam era put the activists to sleep for the remainder of the seventies.

Karp is as deveasting and more when it comes to the domestic uses of foreign wars. While pointing out the false pretexts of all out foreign adventures, from Cuba and the Phillipines onward in his The Politics of War, he makes clear most importantly that war is itself always a pretext to forestall meaningful reform. He shows in excruiting detail how first the Populists and then the middle class Progressives were destroyed by MckInley and Wilson repectively, and the party hacks generally.

And Karp stands our fundamentalist Marxism or economic determinism on his head when he rightly points out that the foundation for monoply capital is in the law as written and/or not enforced by the State, not by immutable natural forces of capital accumlation, and that the real power does in fact lie with the government, specifically the party bosses who work together (sometimes not running an oppostion candidate for instnace, or openly supporting the other team, or purposely running unappealing candidates, etc.) to ensure their own continuted mututal rule against any insurgent comers, Republican or Democrat or independant.

By ensuring that reform is always the most minimal possible, the party hacks prove the lie that there is no power in politics, and that one or another special interest stands in the way of change. The party oligarchs will do anything to prevent this eventuallity, becasue it would mean the end of their power.

Note this is about Power, not wealth. The men who are simply after boodle are not in the cat-bird seat but rather must pay homage in the form of campaign contributions and other tithes to the political class. Of course, there are many cases of combination...


As regards to the intelligence services, my experince of many years, including research, interviews with ex-CIA and many dozens of books leads me to conclude with great certainty that the operation that took place on the 11th of september, 2001 would never have been left to amateurs or to foreign "criminal powers" in what I remember as your phrase.

It is true that there is cooperation among the nation-states, indeed US dominance of same, and you are right to say that Israel does not wag this dog, but rather is another important alternative legend, one a former boss of mine made the subject of a film, "The Protocols of Zion".

And nor will I lose sight of Al-Qaeda and real actual anti-american arabs in this, but Al-Qaeda is not some independant group in temporary or serendipidous alliance with Langley, Jeff, it is a group set up by and for Langley. That this is not as obvious as the tip of everyone's noses by now eludes me, but then I was one of those who felt immediately that the whole thing was a scam.

And it had to be a well organzied scam, down to a T, an advanced military operation. And while I have no doubt that all that was required was C4, the US Armed Services do in fact have directed energy weapons; in fact I saw a few profiled on The Military Channel just tonight.

I would argue that depsite his youth and unfortunate use of himself as narrator, Dylan Avery has it much closer to right than you do, Jeff, or than Peter Dale Scott does. Peter Dale Scott is supported by Daniel Ellsberg, who I had the happiness to lunch with as he purported that it was actually "crazy" to have voted for Nader in 2004. Please Google Douglas Valentine on the subject of Daniel Ellsberg--[the Pentagon Papers, released by a suddenly independant New York Times--- just in time to prove the bona fides of the free press; that the worst that happens to whistleblowers in this county is that they become heroes, and that the ugly world of intelligence had nothing to do with Vietnam-- it was all the regular Army's fault.]

Dylan Avery broke the Cinncinatti Airport story, which is the best explanation I have heard of what happened to the passengers of all four flights (though it does not make their final fate clear)-- it fits most closely with the one set of documents we have on a nearly identical operation--Northwoods, where the CIA trainnees were meant to get off the planes before they blew up.

Were I in charge of the op, i wouldn;' want anyone who could potentially interfere with my plans on board those planes. Radio control of aviation is a technology over a half century old. Why wouldn't they use it? Why would they rely on fanatics who couldn't fly and passengers who might rebel?


The "no plane in the pentagon" explanation does sound like the most ludicrous disinformation, I agree. For a long time I felt the same way-- in fact, it was one of Daniel Ellsbergs points when I met him that such an idea was patently crazy-- then again, he didn;t seem to think it mattered to much one way or the other who did 9-11.

It is also what I hear in certain circles here in New York whenever the whole idea of governemnt complicity in 9-11 is being preemtorially dismissed.


But where is the evidence of a plane, Jeff? Why haven't they released more than a blurry plume of white smoke? Why, Jeff? Why hasn't the most surveilled building in the world provided these images? Why haven't they at least FAKED them, I wonder? And where is the wreckage?

The bigger the lie... ah well, you know. By hitting the building with a Global Hawk plane style cruise missle they could have fun testing their new reinforced walls and they could puch a hole in our psyches at the same time. Because who would believe it? (Except a technial expert, who might see the need clearly).

Iit may have been to difficult to pilot a plane in-- more importantly, once people saw the wreckage of seats and fuselage, they would have expected to see bodies, too. Perhaps all this was too difficult to provide, so they didn't provide anything, just charred grass and no questions asked.


Perhaps you have heard these arguments ad nauseum. If you have, your inabiliity to see the reason in them truly unsettles me. As far as I have read, you have not provided good grounds for your positions on these matters, except to say that you think every grounds should be considered, and that there is now a "new Truth" movement that has somehow set aside first principles.

If you have good grounds to debunk demolition and Pentagon explanations, i would appreciate being made aware of them.

Ans while I think every avenue should be followed to its end, the money trails and other sorts of documentation and reports that you seem to advocate pursuing are the most subject to intellignce distortion. In fact I would bet that their isin't a piece of "leaked" info that isin't tainted, shaped or completely fabricated by the Mighty Wurlitzer. That's its job. It is essentially fruitless to pursue such "inside" leads, in my view.

Better to take samples of 9-11 dust (there are those that have) and have them analysed for explosive residue. Better, as one military scientist puts it on PatriotsQuestion9-11, to employ supercomputers to anaylase the building collapses, better to set up a steel latice or a condemened buiilding and try to recreate the conditions of those supernaturally hot kersonse or diesel fires.

Better to take in the given flight plans, note the discrepcies between the FAA and NORADS and the Commisions stories over the years, and apply common sense.

Better to learn form the history of Pearl Harbor, and indeed the hoax that America, at the height of the Vietnam meatgrinder, manged to land men on the moon the first time it tried... but while they brought three large jeeps, and on later trips golf clubs, they didn;t bring a single photgraphic telescope, which would have allowed them to see further into the universe than ever before. I was never a moonie, that is until I saw "A funny Thing happened on the way to the Moon". I am now a proud and committed moonie.

You should see it Jeff, because it will give you a better sense of how such things, even very large things, are pulled off, from whole secret wars to atom bomb projects, without a blessed soul knowing for sure about them unles and until they are allowed.

I appreciate your embrace of chaos but 9-11 is truly a simple case of a large and complex protection racket, a racket which runs the pool shark called "incompetance theory" to cover its operations. They are so much uglier and more competant than I think even you know Jeff, then even I know, though we both know the Franklin material and all that emanates from it.

Please, Jeff, I beg you, please revisit the demolitions and the pentagon with an open mind. I want to be able to enjoy your blog again, without feeling as though you're some kind of terribly persistent agent provocateur, bent on muddying the noosphere with UFO dreams and 9-11 illusions.

Thanks for reading,

6/05/2007 04:35:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Let me take a turn on Jeff's behalf. We have a few things in common that you should be aware. First and formost, we are both Canadians. I know that doesn't sound "too" omnious but our laws must be the envy of every American politician walking the face of North America. Our intelligence community is joined at the hip with all the rest. We don't have the protections that Americans have been eroding. We've never had them. The panopticon you see coming your way has been a fact of life for all Canadians since forever. We have hate laws. Wire tapping has never needed a judge's permission. In essence, we Canadians have been profiled all our lives.

My second point concerning Jeff is that "Jeff" is really "Jeff". That is his name and WHOIS will give you his "particulars". Many of you here work behind a facade that no one knows who you are. Well, my friend, the only people who don't know who you are "r" us.

6/05/2007 10:29:00 AM  
Blogger Dr. Bombay said...

Friendly Fascism asked:
"Just where is the wreckage
of 93 anyway? Have you ever seen
it?"

According to KOMO Channel 4
{Pittsburgh?} The wreckage of
flight 93 is being stored at
Iron Mountain PA. Which makes me
wonder why CRIME scene evidence,
like the steel girders from the
WTC, is being kept under lock and
key if not outright destroyed. Like
the steel from the WTC being shipped to China. If all the
"hijackers" died in the attacks,
what is the point of keeping
this material from the public
at large?

6/05/2007 01:30:00 PM  
Blogger peng! said...

friendly fascism,

that was a great comment. if i wasn't so lazy and if i knew as much as you i would have written the exact same thing.

i really don't understand why every day is trash Dylan Avery day.

most of the people i know aren't smart enough to understand sophisticated deep politics. but any idiot can see that two 110 story towers don't just self-pulverize themselves into thin air.

i'm not a Canadian diplomat turned poet, English professor and deep politics theorist. heck, i'm not even a sophiticated ironical collage artist.

i think it is true that these people are smarter than we all think. and also that they have planned for the 9/11 Truth movement a long long time ago. They probably even named it. so red herrings like the Mineta story may be scripted too.

but those funcking towers are gone! explain it, please.

6/05/2007 01:34:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Muddy,

I started to speculate (in response to this latest comment of yours) that there must be some kind of mental equivalent of the synchronicity between events, etc...but then that sounded sort of redundant, given that events begin as thoughts anyway. No matter "what path you take in chasing "first causes," all really is mind. Which doesn't mean that the ensuing hard physical realities aren't real, of course.

Fact is that when I was reading your last comment here, it was as if I was anticipating your thoughts before I actually read them. Sympathetic vibration to the nth and all that.

So, look if you will at the other comments sandwiched here in between, specifically what Mark wrote about the impact of higher fuel efficiency & solar power as compared with friendlyfascism's call to arms over 9/11. Something's out of kilter here, it seems to me.

Both comments are "valid," but the one seems to be contained within the other, at least to me. If even 10% of the vehicles on the road were aircars of the Tata/MDI or the DiPietro Rotary variety (which is actually quieter, stronger & more efficient) or electric or hydrogen fuel cell, etc, the whole oil empire would collapse. Christ, if we even just installed whisper-wheel tech (which the old electric trains used 70 years ago!) on the current intentionally fuel inefficient vehicles, then these petro vampires would be caught with their shorts around their ankles (the Standard Position), and all this talk about "security and freedom and"...pardon my reach for the bucket...would be seen for the empty, self-serving rhetoric that it is.

On the other hand, what exactly would bringing the truth of 9/11 to the masses do for the masses? Did the revelations of Paperclip, Gladio, P2OG, and the entire revealed history of US "interventions" around the world change anything? Anything at all? Of course not; you can't say such things around here. The Truth cannot compete with The Lie.

If, on the other hand, you could manage to get some of the many oil-free energy systems in cars & houses, then suddenly it's real.

Maybe after the Empire is obsolete you could go after the war criminals, but will that bring back their victims? Fix the world first, then go chase your villains; it won't work the other way around because they hide behind a screen that most folks think is reality.

Speaking of which, for those interested in the secret history of the air car (it started long before these new air cars), try PNEUMATIC OPTIONS.

Another instance of how we could change the world overnight:
Schauberger returns: Gravitational Vortex Power Plant.


But the bridge between what is and what could be is perhaps still best described by Jeff Vail's Theory of Power, which is available free, online, as long as you don't mind reading in pdf format. It's short, sweet & long on the cosmic treats.

~~~

No cosmic treat here at all, but rather a call for perspective. Peng! asks, "…but those funcking towers are gone! explain it, please.” The explanation is obvious enough, isn’t it? What’s more to the point is whether the significance of that op can be said to compare with the much larger op in the world that has produced this state of affairs:

1 billion people have no access to clean water, 600 million do not live where they want to live, and instead have been displaced or have fled. 30,000 people die every day for lack of food or drink. Children die, 8,000 of them every day of diseases that inoculations would have protected them against. For many there are no doctors, no schools, for their parents no work. They lack everything that is necessary to live.

(one of Norbert Blüm’s Naked Facts , or another chapter in The Chicken & The Egg.)

6/05/2007 02:51:00 PM  
Blogger muddy elephant said...

To paint a picture in broad brushstokes (given a certain intellectual laziness on my part) I think we're all in agreement that the current human condition is caught in some sort of sinister feedback loop. (History repeating itself etc., etc..)

belliosto's slice of american history comment is a poignant reminder of human nature's collective gravity towards conflict and resource ownership.

Perhaps it is a pitfall to digress too much into the underlying reasons. So with that I'd just like to say that all of the info here is mucho appreciated. And, hell, it's a great diversion as well, not necessarily the end of the world, right?

But is entertainment one of the basic needs? This question led me to remember an old Roger Waters album that always depressed the crap out of me. But looking back now it seems he was definitely tapped into the "sympathetic vibration". Check out the link, it's a great review, and it's undoubtedly scary that all the themes touched upon have only expanded.

IC and mark,

great stuff. maybe we can have a sane future...

6/05/2007 06:53:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

1. Since I have been one to post like 'friendlyfascism' a similar complaint, I'll just say "ditto." And leave it at that.

2. However, like IC, let's take that in perspective.

1898 (bombing of the Maine in Cuba harbor, by the USA).

1915 (Lusitania, sank by arrangement between FDR then Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Churchill, then Sea Lord of the Admiralty--Churchill calls off the convoy; U.S. intentionally is shipping illegal munitions to Britain on passenger liners, hoping that hundreds of Americans are killed in the German torpedo spark; ship bizarrely sinks in 18 minutes...; U.S. later was to film on studio lots people struggling in the water and going under and in newsreels attempt to convince moviegoers that it was "live footage" of the tragic act of those Germans killing Americans in the middle of the ocean; many other stories about that boat and its propaganda story...);

1929 (lots of evidence of an intentional stock market crash by Morgan-coordinated banks calling in the loans all at once, after the big players bailed out up to six weeks in advance and then reaped a fortune; Churchill was there to watch the fireworks actually on Wall Street; global depression helped set up global fascism attempt everywhere which the same groups funded);

1941 (Roosevelt's treason regarding Pearl Harbor, killing thousands of US citizens for his political goals of attempting to get the U.S. into WWII through the 'back door' of getting Japan (Germany's ally) attack first--FDR had attempted all sorts of other more direct and illegal provocations against Germany, though Hitler failed to take the bait; FDR's head of the War Department? A Bonesman. SAME ONE implanted in the early 1910s to build up for WWI as WWII);

1960s. After getting rid of 'rogue sons' JFK (and then RFK), Vietnam can kill lots and make more money under Johnson, known as the "Representative for Kelloogg, Brown and Root" (currently part of Halliburton, doing the same in Iraq as KBR in Vietnam); moreover, U.S. corporations profit in building factories and war munitions in the USSR for the other side, providing them top secret U.S. military technology as well so they can make money off both sides off the 'controlled burn' in the war in Vietnam [cite: Sutton, _Best Enemy Money Can Buy_], as well as so the CIA can take over the Golden Triangle of opium and ship it back to the USA, with a 'market' of army addicts already locked in. [cite: Hopsicker's opus Barry and the Boys; and/or Dope, Inc.]

1970s 'oil shocks' intentionally set up to see what happens and what kind of displacement they could create;

1976. the U.S. Army actually plans out the WTC attack (replete with terrorists with boxcutters in the plan) in a top secret "what if" terror drill supposedly to "find out what are the holes in the U.S. defense, you know, just so we can rectify them, we promise."

1979 (FEMA starts up three days early illegally--just so it can be tested out at the "accident" at Three Mile Island; FEMA with police state powers in the event of such emergency. Three days after FEMA inaugurated in other words, Three Mile Island nuclear 'disaster' happens on cue and FEMA steps up to the plate. "Unexpected Emergency" gives federal government complete media and citizen control and locks out local governmental investigative/police and legal issues; airtight covering of federal state terrorism in FEMA worked like a charm--who can investigate FEMA? No one statutorily on the local level; few even know now that it was state terrorism to test FEMA at the nuclear power plant to this day...);

1981 (George H. W. Bush, as Vice President had just completed running a Presidential Assassination drill a day or so earlier, then Reagan's assassination happens. He's stabbed in the car by something else, because he was still alive. His bodyguards get to the hospital before he does--they just sort of drive around slowly to get there, though since Reagan doesn't die like the Bushes wanted. (Bush ran for the 1980 Republican nomination as well, let's remember). There was even going to be a Bush family party scheduled that night in Houston with the family of the assassin, the Hinkley's, who provided a large amount of money for GHWB's campaign in 1980. There is zero investigation of Reagan's assassination. [cite: Tarpley's book on George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography]);

1993 (coterie of treasonous FBI people arrange to bomb the WTCs; their Egyptian agent caught the FBI on tape ordering the NYC FBI to direct the mental vegetables and useful idiots he was controlling to really take out the WTCs with real explosives.);

1995 (Murrah Buidling to delegitimate and frame the whole nationwide patriot movement and crack down on them); however, many internal bombs were in the building (as admitted only on live local coverage; nationally, the 'networks' keep everyone in the dark about the state terorrism operation and blame it on a convenint single individual instead--despite ATF police already decked out for the emergency waiting for it to happen that day, outside the building; state terrorists blew of eldery people and a day care, amongst other things; building additionally housed most of the files of complaints and law cases concerning Gulf War syndrome from the attack on Iraq, part one.

2001 (9-11, same, with a lot more help), etc; in WTC7 remove lots of other pesky legal cases as well, just prewire the whole thing for detonation and step back and wait for the media to manipulate everyone about it)

2001 U.S. domestic anthrax attack from Ft. Detrick "Ames strain" of anthrax, weaponized on top secret CIA contact. Only happens to get to people who had opposed the pre-written Patriot Act police state legislation. Bush and his cabinet were already taking an anthrax medicine Cipro before the attacks even occurred. Cipro sales go thorugh the roof. U.S. denies cheaper versions to be sent in, stands up for Bayer's patent monopoly on anthrax medicine in the wake of the attack where they raked in millions more in one of the last years of their patent on it.

Rumsfeld invests in bird flu vaccines.

Rumsfeld sells the North Koreans the nuclear equipment through his directorship on ABB in Switzerland, then turns around and complains they are a rogue nation with nuclear technology--that he gave them.

See, I think this is IC's point. Does this make us all feel better? Or just nauseous to raise the blinds for a moment. In other words, 9-11 hard truth without something to temper it, will likely only give you nihilism. Beware. To make you feel better requires more pragmatic and proactive approaches than simply expecting evil to disappear by calling out its name in direct sunlight. Merely talking about it is hardly an exorcism of it, in other words.

3. 9-11 is hardly the first state terrorism that Bonesmen rogues in the USA have done to kill innocent people, since 1898. However it is the first one with a non-statist communications medium in place. The internet is like a Gutenberg revolution in which every individual owned a printing press within 10 years. You know, that's really about all it's been...and look at the applications. Who remembers that shocking news story when "the internet is actually starting to talk about something happening in real life!" Now it's like it talks about nothing else.

4. However, unlike IC, let's keep in mind that 9-11 in many ways is quite a strategic 'key to political transformation' (read link, IC) on many levels, so I think it's worth discussing as much as possible. However, yes, it may be a key, though if you are going to use that key to open a door, you better have some place to go. Otherwise, you're just going to stand at the open door, in some kind of Edgar Allen Poe "the horror, the horror!" moment. And that's it.

5. I think we could beat this dead horse some more--thinking that there is something oppositional between 9-11 discussion and pragmatic plans all we want--though I'd argue it's based on a false premise. 9-11 truth can be complementary to all the rest, even catalyzing, instead of a zero sum game that takes away energy. That may depend on your personal psychology though. Mileage may vary.

6. And as for ericswan, I was going to say everything about Canada you were, just to be a devil's advocate, though you saved me from it. Americans ache to glamorize running dog Canadian governments because they think "the grass is always greener" (north of the border or anywhere else). Well, you know who owns all that Canadian timber? Canadian oil shale? Almost all the Canadian economy and most of its politics as a consequence is dominated by the USA. Something like 90% of Canadians all are huddled within 100 miles of the U.S. border anyway, right? :-) And if you want to see some evil Canadians, just watch how some treated Icke on his visit there. (49 minutes, BBC program). Or watch how a Canadian police state wrapped itself around Alex Jones who was just going to cover the Bilderberg meeting. (44 min)

7. Walking some talk, I just started up a location to categorize material/tech ideas in 71 consumptive categories, that you can then scroll through to see what everyone brings to the table. I particularly invite IC to insert a few there now and then.

I have about 100 or so that I want to insert into those threads in the next several days. Just reading through them sparked the surprising idea that there's little difficulty with creating a utopia on earth with already applied and invented technologies and materials; what is holding them back is a politics of unsustainability, and a politics of clientelism, instead of economics per se.

The art of looking out your window--at cars, planes, materials in the road--all arranged out there to exhibit political clientelism instead of economics is a viewpoint that might just turn modernist economics upside down allowing sustainability to break through.

Here's the website:

http://commodityecology.blogspot.com/

Just consider it the parallel bioregional state information clearinghouse...

"No where is required to entirely reinvent the wheel. Related intimately to the book Toward A Bioregional State (2005), this PARALLEL blog will be a clearinghouse of interesting technologies and materials showing that the wider window of known possibilities that can be utilized, instead of reinvented, for institutionalizing sustainability materially, in a particular watershed.

Unlike most blogs, it will be associated with a permanent number of 71 updated threads--one for each of the human commodity choices, as follows:..."


It's a beta test for how to organize this information.


http://commodityecology.blogspot.com/

6/05/2007 07:02:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Richard,

I was on vacation in Orange Beach last week....so that's why I haven't posted much....also, there's a lot of distraction at work and at home.....and, every now and then, I like to step back and absorb and digest before I regurgitate.

The vacation ended up depressing me because I finished Internal Combustion while on it....and I just had to try the ideas out on my in-laws....it didn't go well. It's like talking to Zombies....it doesn't register...they see my wife and I as Kooks, therefore, we have little to no influence on them. But I love to prod and push anyway....and prod and push I did, much to my wife's chagrin.

My wife's family wants us to move to Mobile so they can indoctrinate our childen into the clan of the living dead. Recently, they have been sending info about a German Steelmaker that is going to set up shop in North Mobile. Mark and IC will appreciate the company. It's ThyssenKrupp. A Jewish in-law is at the forefront of this campaign to get us to Mobile...and he has innundated us with propaganda about the numerous opportunities presented by this state-subsidized business transaction. So, I did my homework, and what do you know, ThyssenKrupp are indeed a bunch of Nazis....at least according to John Loftus, who presents a pretty convincing case. I presented the info to my Jewish bro-in-law and he hasn't mentioned it since....but I didn't stop with him...I hammered my wife's mother about it, as well. Her response to everything I presented was "there's nothing we can do about it." IC would have been proud of me, because I didn't accept this as a valid response. In fact, I know the only reason she said it was because the info. was disconfirming and she wanted to squash the discussion....but I kept on. Eventually, she questioned where I got the info. She said "did you get it from the Internet?" She is 81 and doesn't use a computer and knows very little about Cyberspace, so to her, the Internet is just one place, or one source. I tried to explain to her that it was like having an extensive library at your fingertips....but she was skeptical. She's been brainwashed to believe that the Internet lacks credibility....but her USA Today and Mobile Press Register somehow are not lacking credibility....they're legitimate.

Also, the weather at the beach was nothing I have ever experienced on the Alabama Coast this time of year, and I've been frequenting that area since '87. It is usually ridiculously sultry...but not this year. It was substantially dry...similar to California, and the wind was strong from the East the entire time, which I have never experienced since '87. They haven't had significant rain in quite some time. Traditionally, you can count on rain everyday this time of year...but not this year. On our way down, we traveled 300 miles through dense smoke from the Georgia Wildfires.

I can feel the momentum of destruction building. Anyone can if they stop and listen...and feel. It's coming...and it's picking up steam...and the majority of the Industrialized Nations continue to feed what they can't, and won't see...their catastrophic self-annihilation.

I thought about IC's optimism amidst all this, and the conclusion I keep coming to is how highly implausible and insurmountable it really is, not because the ideas aren't sound...but because the people we need to convince aren't capable of being convinced. Such is the stranglehold of the current paradigm of Empire. I just don't see The Masses changing their ways without a Cataclism as the Catalyst....but said Cataclism will most likely wipe us out...and there's the rub and the paradox.

Oh, and believe it, or not, Richard, I have completely ignored the JFK Terrorist Reporting. I figured it like you did and decided not to follow them down the rabbit hole this time...I'll wait for the next rabbit hole...cuz Lord knows, they just keepa cummin.

6/05/2007 09:07:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

The "kook" look, eh Shrub?

I've been on the receiving end of that quite a few times in the last 6 years.

&, like you, I don't particularly mind or let it deter me from pushing & pushing & pushing.

It's actually an inspiration.

By the way, since you're probably one of the few who remembers my deleted post, here's a bit of chimera building.

"MANCHESTER, N.H. - President Bush drew sporadic, startling criticism Tuesday night from Republican White House hopefuls unhappy with his handling of the Iraq war, his diplomatic style and his approach to immigration.

"I would certainly not send him to the United Nations" to represent the United States, said Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and one-time member of Bush's Cabinet, midway through a spirited campaign debate.

Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) criticized the administration for its handling of the Iraq War, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said, "I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came after we knocked down Saddam Hussein."

Rep. Duncan Hunter (news, bio, voting record) of California said the current administration "has the slows" when it comes to building a security fence along the border with Mexico.

Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado recalled that White House aide Karl Rove had once told him "never darken the door of the White House." The congressman said he'd tell George W. Bush the same thing.

The criticism of Bush was more in keeping of the type of rhetoric that could be expected when Democratic presidential contenders debate."



It would all be hilariously funny if my kids & your kids, etc., didn't have to bear the brunt of the coming deluge.

If I were childless & unattached I'd be more than willing to let the dumbfucks run the whole enchilada off a cliff edge just to see the big BOOM it makes when it hits bottom.
But, as I'm sure you're well aware, children tend to change one's perspective.

I have no personal incite into southern weather, but the the thing I found strangely interesting about the tropical storm that just blew through was how folk down south were actually looking forward to it because rain has become such a scarce commodity.
Scary shit brother.
Scary shit indeed.

I understand about the job scene. It can wear on the effing nerves.
Mine is slowly deteriorating.
We had a female staff crippled by one of the clients.
& I do mean crippled.
She has brain damage from being repeatedly kicked in the head & she now can only ambulate with the use of a walker.

My buddy had his nose broken & the kind folk who employ us made him drive himself to the hospital.

If I didn't need the healthcare for my tots I think I'd exit right now.

In a way I'm feeling a bit sympathetic towards your mother-in-law.
While this may be like having a library at my fingertips, I'm not quite sure what I should believe.

I just read an interview with Jim Marrs, a member of Scholars for 911 Truth.
He was talking about Freemasonry & the British Royalist connection to historic outrages, in specific, the Jack the Ripper murders, & he says this:

"Since Macbeth and his lady poisoned King Duncan, and King Henry VIII beheaded or otherwise isposed of his wives, violence has always been used to protect the interests of Britain's royalty. While the details will continue to be debated, there is now enough evidence to show that the Ripper murders were conducted by men connected to the monarchy (by the best accounts the actual killer was royal family physician Sir William Gull) and covered up by ranking Freemasons to protect the Crown. The reason for the murders was to cover-up the fact that the grandson of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert Vincent Christian Edward, known as "Eddy," had secretly married a commoner who had produced a baby girl."

The huge problem with Jim's scholarship is that this is the plot to Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell.
Alan Moore, when confronted by a noted Ripperologist who thought he had finally solved the mystery, said, "Yeah, but I made it all up.""

If this level of scholarship is shared by the rest of the Scholars for 911 Truth, then the 911 Truth movement is seriously buggered.

Although Mr. Marrs does go on to say this:

"The only reason that things are so messed-up today is that too many smart people draw conclusions & make decisions based on incomplete or erroneos information. The "power elite" manipulate events because they hold truthful information they don't want us "useless eaters" to learn. Everyone who cares about the future of this planet must learn the truth and share it."


Maybe Jim is trying to say, "Do as I say, not as I do."
Don't really know.

& finally, speaking of IC's utopian dreams, the last time we spoke, yesterday I believe, I was feeling a bit beside myself so I took a long rambling walk through the woods around my house. As I came around a bend in the path I came upon a scene that made me think of IC's contention that "nature" really isn't cruel, nasty & brutal.
On the path in front of me was a small baby rabbit being mauled by a huge crow as its mother looked on helplessly from the side.

Nope, nothing cruel nasty & brutal about "nature."
Not at all.

As a matter of fact, I could just feel the love oozing from her ample bosom.

On that happy note, I'm glad your back.

6/06/2007 01:00:00 AM  
Blogger Dr. Bombay said...

Shrub,
How absolutly profound your
last post was...
I was impressed by the way you
were able to articulate what we
ALL have been feeling.

6/06/2007 01:19:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

When the worm turns we won't need no stinkin' truthers. Until then, bear with it. The internet as we know it, is as much a part of globalization as the United Nations. The answers won't be found here; just the questions.

6/06/2007 10:27:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah POPEMAN!
ZING!
POW!
BAM!

From his secret cave deep beneath the bowels of Vatican Manor this fierce defender of truth, justice & the Catholic way uses his trusty sidekick St Paul & his high tech, cutting edge Popemobile to wage a never-ending battle against the evils of secular humanism.

"VATICAN CITY - A German man tried to jump into Pope Benedict XVI's uncovered popemobile as the pontiff began his general audience Wednesday and held onto it for a few seconds before being wrestled to the ground by security officers.

ADVERTISEMENT

The pope was not hurt and didn't even appear to notice that the man — who was between 20 or 30 years old — had jumped over the protective barrier in the square and had grabbed onto the white popemobile as it drove by. The pontiff kept waving to the crowd and didn't even look back.

At least eight security officers who were trailing the vehicle as it moved slowly through the square grabbed the man and wrestled him to the ground.

The man was a 27-year-old German who showed signs of "mental imbalance," said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman."

6/06/2007 12:32:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

2 things from Tom Tomorrow's website that i thought were funny in a 'whistling past the graveyard' sort of way that kind of characterises most humor these days.

"Tom Tomorrow:
I hate these people
Brownback, during the audience Q&A portion of the debate, to a woman whose younger brother died in Iraq eight days before he was due to rotate home:

“Thank you for your family’s service, and what your brother did, that’s incredible, an incredible gift that he and your family have given us.”

Well, no, see, actually this man’s death was not an “incredible gift” to us, it was a tragic loss to his family, and the appropriate response is “I’m very sorry for your loss.” But to say that would be to acknowledge that there’s something to be sorry for when someone dies in Iraq, and no one on that stage can acknowledge that. So the deaths of our troops are now “incredible gifts.” And it’s Christmastime, every fucking day.


Jonathan Schwarz:
Libby’s devious integrity
So Libby’s been sentenced to two and a half years. Meanwhile, all the letters from Libby’s friends pleading for leniency have been released.

One particularly entertaining one is from Henry Kissinger. Here’s how Kissinger pretends to see the world, when writing to a judge:

"I met Scooter early in the second Bush administration, when he served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney. In that capacity, he attended all my meetings with the Vice President. He also acted as a kind of liaison for me to the National Security process. I was deeply impressed by his dedication, seriousness, patriotism and essential dignity…in my observations, he pursued his objectives with integrity and a sense of responsibility."

Here’s how Henry Kissinger actually sees the world, from The Final Days:

"Kissinger counseled his aides that deviousness was part of their job [on the National Security Council]. “You systems-analysis people have too much integrity,” he told one of them. “This is not an honorable business conducted by honorable men in an honorable way. Don’t assume I’m that way and you shouldn’t be.”

6/06/2007 12:48:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Mark,

Will do. You may be right about that distinction between 9/11 and the other episodes.


Richard,

There is death in Nature because there is life. What we've added is cruelty. Not because of our nature, either, but precisely because we're so miserably dislocated from the Natural Order. I'm not talking noble savage here--we've both had enough of that debate--but the notion that Schauberger put forth in the title of his one book, Our Senseless Toil: the Cause of the World Crisis.

You can't logically refute the proposition that the world could be ordered along very different lines (say, for example, the love & sacrifice that you offer for your children's future) simply because it hasn't been allowed to happen yet. If you go back to that Naked Facts link, you'll find listed just above the one I quoted the following:

The 358 richest families own one half of the world’s assets. The world’s 500 largest private companies control 52% of the world’s national product. These 500 groups are richer than the 133 poorest countries in the world. Between 1980 and 1995, the total assets of the 100 largest multinationals rose by 700%. These figures if anything go easy on the rich to the detriment of the poor, since the average income of the poor countries includes the income of the superrich who live there and increase the average figure. Averages tell us little about the bandwidth of the figures for which they constitute the arithmetic mean. If poverty and wealth increase at the same rate, the average remains the same. Averages thus tell us little about the extent of the difference between rich and poor. If one person eats two sausages and one person eats none, they have together eaten an average of one sausage, the only difference being that the one has eaten his fill and the other is hungry. The difference between the poor and the rich is growing. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The assets of the dollar billionaires rose by 57% between 2003 and 2005. The income gap between the richest and poorest countries is increasing, from a ratio of 3:1 in 1820, to 35:1 in 1950 and 72:1 in 1992. In 98 countries incomes are lower than they were 10 years ago, while in Africa they are down 20% on 25 years ago.

Is this supposed to be coincidence, incidental, or, stretching even further, a reflection of the state of Nature? Please.

What we can use our reason to infer is that the picture we have of Nature has been twisted & manipulated (like everything else) to serve a purpose not our own. I know I've already linked it too many times, but The Moral Basis of Life gives you a picture of Nature that is based on science, not some rosy-lensed romanticism. When you look there at what the worldkillers have done to make us think nature is the way you portray it, then you'll find some dishonesty.

If you'd like another, even more scientific explantion of what the bastards have done to make us believe their tooth, nail & claw image, try Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, which is about much more than just gravity:

Transgressing disciplinary boundaries ... [is] a subversive undertaking since it is likely to violate the sanctuaries of accepted ways of perceiving. Among the most fortified boundaries have been those between the natural sciences and the humanities.

-- Valerie Greenberg, Transgressive Readings (1990, 1)

The struggle for the transformation of ideology into critical science ... proceeds on the foundation that the critique of all presuppositions of science and ideology must be the only absolute principle of science.

-- Stanley Aronowitz, Science as Power (1988b, 339)

There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in "eternal" physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the "objective" procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.

But deep conceptual shifts within twentieth-century science have undermined this Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics; revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast further doubt on its credibility; and, most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of "objectivity". It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical "reality", no less than social "reality", is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific "knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities. These themes can be traced, despite some differences of emphasis, in Aronowitz's analysis of the cultural fabric that produced quantum mechanics; in Ross' discussion of oppositional discourses in post-quantum science; in Irigaray's and Hayles' exegeses of gender encoding in fluid mechanics; and in Harding's comprehensive critique of the gender ideology underlying the natural sciences in general and physics in particular...



Those (and I don't mean you) who say that we followed John Lennon's advice and gave peace a chance--"so sorry it just didn't work out"--are lying through their teeth, as usual. Aside from which, what other choice do we have but to try?

6/06/2007 02:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

what other choice do we have but to try?

Try what? I'm not being cheeky, either. You have plowed us over with what's possible....what you haven't done is said how we get from Point A (Where we are now) to Point B (Where we need to be). I'm not saying you have to provide that....my contention is that therein lies the rub. Also, you do a wonderful job of showing us that people are thinking outside of the box, and that many things are possible, but it is so fragmented that any focused momentum seems easily dispersed and diffused. Take Internal Combustion and its support of Hydrogen and juxtapose it with Who Killed The Electric Car and its absolute disdain for Hydrogen. This is just one example of two seemingly well meaning factions at specific odds with one another on which path we should take....and that's just one example of a myriad of examples as to the fragmentary approach.

I know Mark proposes the Bio-Regional Democracy, but don't you advocate the use of our current political structure to migrate to that end, Mark? How can we truly do that if our Government isn't truly democratic or representative...and we all know it is neither?

Dissolution of the Corporation as a legal entity has to be high on the agenda, if not the first order, but how the hell do you think you could accomplish that considering the vice-like grip Empire has on the Zombies?

Like I mentioned above, we can talk til we're blue in the face, but these Zombies refuse to let the light of day slip through their hermetically sealed armor. I know Starroute said we don't need them...or they will just come along....well, I don't buy that. They won't just come along unless calamity renders all other options irrelevant, or they are brainwashed to do so by the very Corporate Marketers we abhor.

Thanks for the kind words, Dr. Bombay. By the way, I love that name....it conjures up visions of Elizabeth Montgomery twitching her nose shortly before he arrives from a polo game in India.

6/06/2007 03:56:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Well there's the rub, isn't it, Shrub? I would say there are two main components to the struggle. One is to convince people that there is another way, that we don't need oil, that scarcity has been manipulated (along with a great many other things), that history is a lie told by those who've imposed their naked will upon Gaia's creatures. If we can't demonstrate that other possibilities exist, then there's no reason to try, right?

The other component is to start up projects that empby the sort of alternative view that Mark & I & others have been presenting, in order to begin a shift where it counts. Not at the policy level, which is hopelessly trapped in byzantine reptilian structures, but down home on the farm and in the 'hood, Green Belt style.

Another hopeful, helpful view of the problem and its solutions follows, the Vortex Mechanics site I linked upfield:


The holistic, integrated view of our present predicament

When one understands the concepts of Viktor Schauberger and Nikola Tesla, the doorways to "free thinking and free energy" will be unlocked. The lines of control which hold the unfortunate "dumbed down" victims of academia, will be broken. The mental prison of materialistic, scientific reductionism, will be properly dethroned and marginalized, then hope will finally prevail.
From this free and
enlightened vista of thinking, a world view of abundance and a lifestyle of peace, prosperity, and freedom will produce the foundation for mankind's happiness. These virtuous aspirations transcend and oppose the dreary scientific/religious/governmental/ corporate/academic view of a world of scarcity, war and survival, financial ruin and the destruction of our personal freedoms and our environment.




Gyron Flow-Vortex Ring Electron

In a world of
abundance and negentropy there is no need to fight over dwindling resources. Water can be desalinated and transported great distances to arid regions without the massive energy costs. There would be no "have nots". Everyone's basic needs would be assured. Starvation would cease to exist. If we all want it to. The technological possibilities are limitless with Tesla and Schauberger's insights and inventions relating to free energy. The Ether Physics they believed in, is the Physics of love, hope and abundance.

It is easy to imagine a world without war, because everyone would be working towards the goal of bringing civilization back into a harmonious relationship with nature for the sake of our mutual survival. We would see the end of the fossil/nuclear fuel age and an end to all of the cancer causing pollution of this insidious academic crime. Also, an end, by diffusion, to the pyramids of political, financial, media, academic and religious control, where wealth and power are dangerously concentrated into a hands of few jaded, impostors.


Again, what else have we got to do, bunker down and wait for the End? Stare into the maw of death and lose all hope, as Mark warns us against?

6/06/2007 04:12:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Richard,

Is that how you dislocated your collar bone....by taking down one of the patients/clients? My wife spent time at Charter for her graduate school residency...and she had to be trained on how to take down clients who were much larger than she. Afterall, she's only 5 feet four inches and 105lbs....but they were only teenagers...not fully grown men. I couln't imagine her taking down Karl Childers in Sling Blade.

I wonder how they cared for Retarded Folk in Pre-Civilization Societies?

6/06/2007 04:14:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Shrub said:

"I know Mark proposes the Bio-Regional Democracy, but don't you advocate the use of our current political structure to migrate to that end, Mark? How can we truly do that if our Government isn't truly democratic or representative...and we all know it is neither?"

Yes and no. It's a two part question. First, no, I don't advocate going through the current massively corrupt framework or expecting the current one to help you. It's doing a great deal of organizing and subsidizing harm to you. However, simply leaving it alone like that or pretending that doesn't matter is not in your best interest either.

Stage one: I would advocate capacity building first--working on organizing particular localities for their own material optimalities as that post argued: Two Institutions Required in Every Watershed: Commodity Ecology and Civic Democratic Institutions. This would be to remove externalities and to work on aiding people on the ground getting clear what are their own priorities.) That is its own reward, regardless of other future endeavors, right? This could be facilitated and achieved with a common set of institutional ideas--in sort of an ecoregional Hellenization so to speak. Thus, the whole bioregional state motif is not necessarily only addressed to being the first "ecological Montesquieu" solution to formal democratic institutions....

Part two of your question, for which I would answer 'yes' for that, these frameworks would have a multiplier effect and facilitate a politics of locality (I've talked of it as the Local Wing, read that to understand what I'm getting at) that is sorely missing in the current placeless regime of health, ecological, and economic feedback into politics, as they are (unsustainable).

With novel systemic pressures, other issues can be unlocked. However, regardless, the first stage is its own reward and it would only keep building. Given this demographic, we are at some form of tipping point where institutions like that would readily drop out of vague (liquid) solution into something tangible.

IC said:

"Again, what else have we got to do, bunker down and wait for the End? Stare into the maw of death and lose all hope, as Mark warns us against?"

Well, I didn't say it would be easy. I did say it would be challenging, and even perhaps fun. It's definitely self-rewarding as well as socially rewarding. And can I say cheaper? Most of this stuff would be completely off the shelf. No reinventions of the wheel. All people have to do is team up locally.

It seems to me that people in general have stopped believing that they are part of the historical process themselves in many ways. Getting over that "safe fatalism" increasingly may happen when people understand more, than it isn't safe...and the costs the current arrangements are going to keep throwing on you and taking from you (material and psychic) are going to keep getting higher and higher.

To a roomful of 'free energy technologists' in 2001, Peter Lindemann answered this question as: "we're not asking for permission." And he got a round of applause. (at about 8:00 min. in, into this 10 minute film, they are talking about this very issue); this is a great film talk in the whole--if you can find more than just this piece of it).

I still think Peter was overly jocular about the political difficulties later on though. Simply ignoring them fails to solve them. They'll sneak up on you once more. However, working on starting that conversation about novel formal institutional ecological checks and balances removing such frameworks of corrupt political gatekeeping is what what the bioregional state book is about.

6/06/2007 06:33:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

On that tipping point:

G8 Protest: More than 10,000 block Heiligendamm
author: reposted from Germany IMC

G8 Protest: More than 10,000 block Heiligendamm

As hundreds of G8 delegates arrived in the area today, mass blockades seriously interrupted their arrival in the fenced security zone.

Thousands of activists blocked all routes leading to the G8 meeting venue.

Over 10,000 people [still] blocked the fence gates and breached the newly declared zone around the fence in which all demonstrations had been declared illegal.

In the evening, police violently dispersed one of the blockades, while others were continuing, with several thousand people still on the streets. Other activists were protesting in the streets at the Laage airport.

In the late evening, more than 1000 people prepare to stay overnight in three blockades.
Pictures 1 / Pictures 2

in the first link: I particularly thought the second and third pictures were inspiring.

in the second link: second, third, fourth.

Look at all that motion. We aren't alone in this, guys and gals.

6/06/2007 06:50:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Pictures 3

Even more impressive. All at one link.

6/06/2007 07:00:00 PM  
Blogger tazmic said...

IC:

'The paper, titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"[2], was published in the Spring/Summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue of Social Text, which had no peer review process, and so did not submit it for outside review. On the day of its publication, Sokal announced in another publication, Lingua Franca, that the article was a hoax, calling his paper "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense", which was "structured around the silliest quotations I could find about mathematics and physics" made by humanities academics.'

google: Sokal Affair

6/06/2007 07:45:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

We may be missing one of those chinks in the armour and the man with the axe to expose it. In the Republican debate, Ron Paul pointed out that many of the best solutions flow out of the constitution and particularily he mentions article 1 and that not all solutions to the problem need be applied (Roe vs. Wade) across the board. The solutions Paul was proscribing are similar to what Mark has placed here. That the solution may be "regional".

6/06/2007 08:35:00 PM  
Blogger John Kirby said...

Only had a chance to scan the comments section again, but really wanted to thank Mark for the G8 pictures-- inspiring, and lovely!

6/06/2007 08:43:00 PM  
Blogger John Kirby said...

Oh, and again, Mark great list of pretext inidents! I will add, for starters, 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, phony from front to back, top to bottom,and seved great interests both in Middle East and the US...

I would and often do argue (convincingly I think) that neither Iran or Iraq ever went rougue, but rather remain the best of "friendly enemies" to the US...

6/06/2007 08:52:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What if Bio-Regionalism separates the country into autonomous statelets...some resembling Mark's Model, but others Dictatorial and Fascistic, and the Dictatorial and Fascistic states make war on the Democratic States with Mark's Checks and Balances?

6/06/2007 08:57:00 PM  
Blogger Dr. Bombay said...

"...and the indian chiefs
with their old beliefs,
know the balance
is undone..crazy ions..
You can feel it out in traffic,
everyone hates everyone...
And the gas leaks
and the oil spills,
and sex sells everything
and sex kills..."

Joni Mitchell

6/06/2007 11:53:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Muddy,

I kind of like it even more that way. Think about it--it's a hoax because it's a.) not peer-reviewed, and b.) full of "left wing cant"...and yet amazingly prescient either despite or because of these factors.

For example, in the passage I quoted, Sokal talks about the role of worldview in the warped foundation of imperial science--Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity meets reductionism vs. holism--and that's just exactly what's happened. Later on, when Sokal puts morphogenesis on a par with string theory, or even more so when he describes Goethean science:

...the postmodern sciences overthrow the static ontological categories and hierarchies characteristic of modernist science. In place of atomism and reductionism, the new sciences stress the dynamic web of relationships between the whole and the part; in place of fixed individual essences (e.g. Newtonian particles), they conceptualize interactions and flows (e.g. quantum fields). Intriguingly, these homologous features arise in numerous seemingly disparate areas of science, from quantum gravity to chaos theory to the biophysics of self-organizing systems. In this way, the postmodern sciences appear to be converging on a new epistemological paradigm, one that may be termed an ecological perspective, broadly understood as ``recogniz[ing] the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the embeddedness of individuals and societies in the cyclical patterns of nature."

he's not making it seem silly but actually (if inadvertantly or even sarcastically) describing very real fields. Biomimicry is the sane science. It's the principle behind high efficiency solar conversion tech, as well as permaculture and positive energy co-efficient houses--these things, and a host of other potentially planet-saving technologies really do exist! (Google biomimcry.)

The weird twist in the Sokal affair is that the things he lampooned as pseudoscience in the original article only came about years after the "joke". If you take a look at his Afterword ("...in which I explain my motives and my true views..."), you see that he was actually considering the legitimacy of the questions he raised in the parody:


To what extent is our (true) knowledge of computer science, quantum electronics, solid-state physics and quantum mechanics -- and our lack of knowledge about other scientific subjects, e.g. the global climate -- a result of public-policy choices favoring militarism? To what extent have the erroneous theories (if any) in computer science, quantum electronics, solid-state physics and quantum mechanics been the result (in whole or in part) of social, economic, political, cultural and ideological factors, in particular the culture of militarism?9 These are all serious questions, which deserve careful investigation adhering to the highest standards of scientific and historical evidence. But they have no effect whatsoever on the underlying scientific questions: whether atoms (and silicon crystals, transistors and computers) really do behave according to the laws of quantum mechanics (and solid-state physics, quantum electronics and computer science). The militaristic orientation of American science has quite simply no bearing whatsoever on the ontological question, and only under a wildly implausible scenario could it have any bearing on the epistemological question.

But, instead of looking at the question as a matter of what might be achieved if our scientific orientation were not that of servants of the Military-Industrial complex (with those advances I mentioned), he assumed that non-reductionist science would somehow refute what works in the Newtonian world:

(E.g. if the worldwide community of solid-state physicists, following what they believe to be the conventional standards of scientific evidence, were to hastily accept an erroneous theory of semiconductor behavior because of their enthusiasm for the breakthrough in military technology that this theory would make possible.)

This is where he makes his mistake. Non-Euclidian geometry does not "cancel out" Euclidian geometry; both work, in their spheres. The fact is that Sokal's goal was actually admirable on some levels, as a reaction against intellectually crippling fads such as deconstructionism and dialectical materialism, for example. What he quite accidentally did though, was to predict through ridicule whole areas of promising scientific discovery.

I suspect that his defense of the military applications orientation of orthodox science may also have been partially motivated by pangs of conscience. It's not an easy thing, morally speaking, to defend one's refusal to respond to Bucky's admonition to make the switch from "weaponry to livingry."

The epilogue to the Sokal affair is still being written, and a fascinating case it is--the only one I can think of offhand where science imitates parody (even if it's only a variation on life imitating art.)

Thanks for giving me the impetus to bring that story full circle.

6/07/2007 12:55:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

IC.. pics of the community garden..

http://fshodd.blogspot.com/

Decentralized food source..Why is it the greatest tragedies in the U.S. have been against the splinter groups that move toward self sufficiency..Waco..Ruby Ridge..Mormon colonies..Jim Jones.

6/07/2007 01:14:00 AM  
Blogger CuriosityShop said...

Four reformers met under a bramble bush. They were all agreed that the world must be changed. `We must abolish property,' said one. `We must abolish marriage,' said the second. `We must abolish God,' said the third. `I wish we could abolish work,' said the fourth. `Do not let us get beyond practical politics,' said the first. `The first thing is to reduce men to a common level.' `The first thing,' said the second, `is to give freedom to the sexes.' `The first thing,' said the third, `is to find out how to do it.' `The first step,' said the first, `is to abolish the Bible.' `The first thing,' said the second, `is to abolish laws.' `The first thing,' said the third, `is to abolish mankind.'"

Robert Louis Stevenson


http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer157.html

You do not know and will never know who the Remnant are, or where they are, or how many of them there are, or what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more: first, that they exist; second, that they will find you. ~ Albert Jay Nock

Decades ago, when I first read Nock’s essay about “the Remnant” – an essay written in 1936 – I dismissed it as a form of millenarian thinking. But as Western civilization reveals its weakened foundations in the form of rapidly expanded state violence, his words have become more relevant. An “obscure, unorganized, [and] inarticulate” group of individuals, the Remnant, said Nock, need to be supported because “when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society.”

Our modern world is grounded in the illusion that social order can only be maintained through institutionally-structured, vertically-imposed regulatory systems. But the pyramidal hierarchies to which we have been trained to look for such management are in a state of decline. The vertical is collapsing into the horizontal, and the political establishment is fighting for its very existence by intensifying the use of the methodology that defines its nature: the use of violence.

Political systems do not like to resort to any more coercive practices than are necessary to sustain their power over people. Threats and the exercise of force are the resources upon which the state depends, and – like the wealth that private persons spend in conducting their peaceful, marketplace transactions – political authorities are not inclined to waste their usage. But when state power is no longer respected; when men and women engage in basic social practices outside the supervision of the state; and when all of politics comes to be seen as nothing more than an elaborate self-serving racket benefiting those who control the machinery of the state, the herd must be shepherded back to its appointed confinements.

If the public is to be kept obedient, it must be kept in a constant state of fear. Frightened people huddle together and look to those they regard as more capable than themselves for protection. This explains why, in the words of Randolph Bourne, “war is the health of the state.”

As we see in modern events, such thinking – and the practices it produces – has torn our world apart. America – in its traditional forms – is in its death throes, and no amount of institutional wizardry, halftime pep talks, or magic elixirs, will reverse the present course. As with the decline of prior civilizations, however, our future is not necessarily a bleak one. Humanity is now confronted with the choice of whether “society” is to continue being thought of in terms of institutionalized interests, or is to reflect the varied and spontaneous relationships that emerge from the interactions of free men and women?


http://www.physorg.com/news99761236.html
Entrepreneurship can triumph over globalization
Embracing innovation is the only way for Western businesses to succeed in the global market, says Indiana University economics Professor David Audretsch, whose new book, The Entrepreneurial Society, is due for release in July (Oxford University Press). He argues that labor will continue to be outsourced abroad as long as the tasks involved are routine and replicable, but companies that reward new ideas, niche markets and community collaboration can thrive on local employment.

The book outlines the progression in the U.S. and Europe from the managed economy of the Cold War era through globalization, arriving at the current state Audretsch terms "the entrepreneurial society." This economic climate, he says, supports businesses that are highly adaptable and targeted to specific consumer needs. Drawing on his research linking the number of startups in a community to its economic health, Audretsch concludes that industries must adopt an entrepreneurial mindset in order to remain viable.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/15/BUG5SP63BR85.DTL

Responsibility is in their sites
Web entrepreneurs have an eye on social need -- not personal greed
Jessica Guynn, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Ryan Mickle's life was the stuff young bourgeois dreams are made of. He had a lucrative career as a management consultant, drove a flashy car and lived a few blocks from the beach in an exclusive neighborhood on the Newport Beach (Orange County) peninsula.

Then a year ago he bought a lottery ticket. While jotting down all of the things he would do with the winnings, from spending more time with family and friends to making a real difference in the world, Mickle began to take stock of his life. He was earning a lot of money but was giving very little of himself. And he was the one who was poorer for it.

"I won the lottery that day by realizing that I had everything I needed to start living that life, right then and there," Mickle said.

So Mickle ditched his high-paying job to brainstorm a new venture with friend Rod Ebrahimi. On a napkin they scribbled their goals: Build an online community that changes the world; make a socially responsible business more profitable; and have fun while doing the right thing.

The result was Dotherightthing.com, a San Francisco startup that allows users to rank companies based on their social impact on the world.

And just read comments by Angela Merkel that all these protestors are showing the world that we need the STATE to keep order!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4
Final Speech of "The Great Dictator"
(also known as "Look Up, Hannah" )
by Charlie Chaplin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEhjLSHhcT8
it’s hard to be a god
(some fun with a message)

http://www.indigo.org/mrrogers.html
Fred McFeely Rogers
2002 Commencement Address at Dartmouth College
And old Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood of love and fairness, that's what it's all about.

And 9/11 shocked us, woke up many, while we all sat around watching the TV show violence all over the world, eating our TV dinners, flipping the channel to the latest stock market report, but it is never OK to use evil to do good, or good to do evil.

Sorry for the length, I don't get to post often, so I tend to be long winded.

Thanks for not being mad at me Shrub!

Movie Girl

6/07/2007 08:08:00 AM  
Blogger surrender said...

This is the corporation TATA that is producing the Air Car. I have been reading about thier companies and products and for a few years. The success of the corporation and the dedication to its employees and products is making a difference in the world.

From their Web pages:


"Leadership with trust:"

Purpose
At the Tata Group our purpose is to improve the quality of life of the communities we serve. We do this through leadership in sectors of national economic significance, to which the Group brings a unique set of capabilities. This requires us to grow aggressively in focused areas of business.
Our heritage of returning to society what we earn evokes trust among consumers, employees, shareholders and the community. This heritage is being continuously enriched by the formalisation of the high standards of behaviour expected from employees and companies.
The Tata name is a unique asset representing leadership with trust. Leveraging this asset to enhance Group synergy and becoming globally competitive is the route to sustained growth and long-term success.

Five core values

The Tata Group has always sought to be a value-driven organisation. These values continue to direct the Group's growth and businesses. The five core Tata values underpinning the way we do business are:

Integrity: We must conduct our business fairly, with honesty and transparency. Everything we do must stand the test of public scrutiny.

Understanding: We must be caring, show respect, compassion and humanity for our colleagues and customers around the world, and always work for the benefit of the communities we serve.

Excellence: We must constantly strive to achieve the highest possible standards in our day-to-day work and in the quality of the goods and services we provide.

Unity: We must work cohesively with our colleagues across the Group and with our customers and partners around the world, building strong relationships based on tolerance, understanding and mutual cooperation.

Responsibility: We must continue to be responsible, sensitive to the countries, communities and environments in which we work, always ensuring that what comes from the people goes back to the people many times over."


IC: this from one of you links:

"Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations."

IC: Whether this is ever explained, to me it is "proof" of our interconnectedness to ALL things that exists and you and others here are in the process of creating an alternativie way to live and to see life. We have no other choice.

SHRUB: Despair is our ONLY enemy.


Cheers?

6/07/2007 11:41:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Despair is our ONLY enemy.

No...despair is a legitimate feeling that shouldn't be suppressed. The key is to not let despair get the best of you, but rather let it serve as an impetus for change.

I'm just being realistic. I live and work in Corporate America, Surrender. Corporate America, and the Corporate West, in general, is the malaise that's driving the world to destruction. It's grip is vice-like....and I don't see the relinquishment of that grip without a calamity...and even that's no guarantee that the legal structure known as a Corporation won't replant itself again after the smoke clears...if it clears. It's like the Energizer Bunny....it just keeps going and going and going. Read Internal Combustion as IC suggested and get a preview of what the Corporation can do when it sees a threat. You will soon understand that it would do the same with any of the ideas IC and Mark are proposing...only it's added 100 more years of expertise and knowledge in which to annihilate any threats before said threats gain significant momentum. You must address this issue because it will sure as hell address you.

6/07/2007 12:08:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

"There is death in Nature because there is life."

Is this supposed to explain something IC?

We've added "cruelty" to "Nature?"

If you mean that humans created the label "cruel," then I'd agree with you.

Otherwise, gimme an effing break pal. Nature is completely and totally amoral.

That "Gaia," "cosmic consciosness" crap was an invention of aging hippies who needed something to replace the God they killed during the 60's.

Please explain to me how you're completely & totally sure that humanity is little more than a blip on history's radar, due for nothing more than the total extinction that overcame the dinosaurs.

Why, because humans are just so special that they just have to survive?

Again, give me a break.

You seem to be making an incredible leap of logic by assuming that humans are inherently rational creatures who will make good decisions if they're only given "the truth."

Shrub keeps hammering what you keep ducking & dodging.

No matter what you construct there will be folk who want nothing more than to tear it down. If, for no other reaon, than to see the look on your face when it all goes KER-PHLOOEY!

What would you be prepared to do to protect it?

Would you kill?

Would you do what Chavez is doing & bury all dissent, even if the dissent is by rich folk you don't like.

No one forces anyone to watch oodles of tv while growing huge on McSlop's meat flavored Frisbees.

Americans view consumerism as "an activity."

I do none of that yet I was raised neck deep in American corporate propaganda.

They do it because they fucking like it.

The only reason there is any groundswell of dissent in this country is because the war went badly.

If we would have just slaughtered enough people to easily impose our imperial ambitions the majority of Americans WOULD NOT GIVE A FUCK.

Even your boy Joe pointed out that his middle class American buddies are only raising questions because the economic situation is affecting them personally.

You also keep bringing up the wealth inequality.

Personally IC, while I don't make much money, I don't want a hand-out from anyone.
My one experience with charity left a bad taste in my mouth.

In Dec.2006, my wife lost her job.
While inconveniant, it wasn't the end of life as we know it.

But some well meaning soul placed us on a church charity list. So on X-mas eve 2006, while preparing to take my 2 daughters grocery shopping, we had Santa & his christian elves ho-ho-ho-ing on our porch.
Before I could even say "No thanks" they were bringing in tubs of food & gifts & furniture that I neither needed nor wanted.
&, because we weren't suitably submissive & grateful, they left in somewhat of a huff.

What made me most uncomfortable was the fact that these total strangers knew my kids names.

I did not like that.

Now, the food, we just repacked & gave to a local food bank.

The gifts they gave my kids were highly inappropriate crap.
My 5& 7year old daughters got make-up. I don't allow them to wear make-up.
My 9 year old got an adults skull & crossbones biker belt buckle.
Needless to say it all ended in the trash.

I attempted to give the furniture, a grime covered 20 year old tv, a table & chairs that looked like an army of kids wearing baseball cleats repeatedly walked over it , & a daybed with what looked like a huge pee stain in the center, to the local Goodwill, but they wouldn't accept it because it was beneath their standards.

Charity may be great when you ask for it, but having charity imposed on you is an embarrassment

My children were made to feel so uncomfortable that they made us promise to be elsewhere on X-mas eve next year.

Y'know, there are times you sound like my union leadership who are continually demanding more money for a membership that is primarily composed of fat lazy whining dumbfucks who spend more time & energy complaining than actually working.

No thanks.

6/07/2007 01:14:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No one forces anyone to watch oodles of tv while growing huge on McSlop's meat flavored Frisbees.

My colleagues think I'm nuts because I laughed so hard when I read this, I almost fell out of my seat. That was awesome. Man, Richard, when you get going, you're as good as anyone....and I mean that, sincerely.

6/07/2007 01:23:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

ericswan,

Beauty. Did you see those tortise shell gardening links?

~~~

Richard,

Do you really believe that the view of nature that you share with the owners is somehow free from your worldview, "objective;" that things are the way they are because we're just so irredeemably evil? Let's see...you saw a rabbit getting eaten..therefore...that is so scientific!

If that's what you really believe then why bother with anything? Why write here, why strive to protect and nurture your kids? Why not just kill them as an act of mercy if you're so sure that there's nothing we can do?

If Nature weren't based on a unified interconnectedness, then the biomimcry tech wouldn't work. It does.

If you choose to believe the propaganda you've been fed, that's your choice--but please don't bother to explain how rational and objective you or "your" version of Nature are.

But by all means, gloom on--I'm sure there's more of an appetite for dystopian porn than for actually getting off our moaning asses and doing something about the problems we face. Or should ericswan just rip up his garden and slaughter his bunnies 'cuz Nature sucks and life's a bitch? Should Mark stop building alternative pathways 'cuz we're all gonna die?

What is your point, dude?


As to your question ("Shrub keeps hammering what you keep ducking & dodging"), I dodge nothing. You answer the question, angry gasbag: what's the point of doing anything if everything is so fucked up?

No, I would not kill. Remember my point about where morality falls down? "The ends can never justify the means because you become the means you employ." (No, of course not; you don't consider, you just spew your bile regardless of who says what)

Spew on, brother, spew on. Btw, how is that you're filled with love and compasssion when we're all so damned evil? Are you somehow different, better than you fellow man?


You don't really have to answer my questions, Richard, as you know--I'm used to your style of dialogue. Whatever makes you happy.



(Yuck!...After rinsing my mouth out...)

Inspired by the hot button topic-ness of the supposedly pseudoscientific study of dynamicalism, I thought I'd come out of the pharmacological closet and share a fun (and yes, dammit, highly relevant) link or twain:

Was there a whiff of cannabis about Jesus?


from

A Beginner's Guide to Immortality: Extraordinary People, Alien Brains, and Quantum Resurrection, by the inimitable...Clifford A. Pickover

Great, great links at the bottom of the page, in the good doctor's sources (even stodgy old Walter Cronkite waxes warrior-like about the New Inquisition[s]).

6/07/2007 03:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why write here

Come now, IC, that's so worn out and lame. One could ask the same of you, and so I will. Why write here, IC? This is hardly the venue for you. This blog leans more heavily towards how fucking insidious things are rather than how we can make it better....but I have never begrudged your incessant cheerleading, so why begrudge Richard offering his honest opinion? Are you this fragile that you would stoop to persuade someone with whom you don't agree to go somewhere else so you don't have to bother with them? That sounds an awful lot like the asshole xenophoboc bastards who say if you don't like it here (America), then why don't you leave. Also, why the ad-hominem? Richard didn't call you names....he confronted your notions, and that's perfectly fair and just...but you have to go and call him a gasbag and say he spews bile. That's bullshit, IC. I appreciate Richard's presence on this blog every bit as much as I appreciate your's. You should do the same. I expected more of you.

6/07/2007 05:40:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

IC..Interesting link to Jesus Christ and his hippie friends. I posted a link many weeks ago that suggested itself to be the original writings or at least the "original" oral tradition of the man called Jesus. I think you mentioned that it "touched" you in some way. I will post this link to inform you of the Romanist origins of the bible. This research suggests that the bread and wine that Romanists use to celebrate Christ was actually "borrowed" from Mithra. The article concludes that no part of the bible could have been written by any of the disciples or Christ and that it was simply fudged.

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/NewTestament.html

Your link here..
http://www.cannabis.net/articles/jesus-cannabis.html

confirms the Mithras connection. My link to the Essene Gospel quotes as follows and is here reprinted for your benefit and to the benefit of Richard's comments above..

And Jesus answered: “It was said to them of old time: ‘All beasts that move upon the earth, all the fish of the sea, and all the fowl of the air are given into thy power.’ I tell you truly, of all creatures living upon the earth, God created only man after his image. Wherefore beasts are for man, and not man for beasts. You do not, therefore, transgress the law if you kill the wild beast to save your brother's life. For I tell you truly, man is more than the beast. But he who kills the beast without a cause, though the beast attack him not, through lust for slaughter, or for its flesh, or for its hide, or yet for its tusks, evil is the deed which he does, for he is turned into a wild beast himself. Wherefore is his end also as the end of the wild beasts.”

Then another said: “Moses, the greatest in Israel, suffered our forefathers to eat the flesh of clean beasts, and forbade only the flesh of unclean beasts. Why, therefore, do you forbid us the flesh of all beasts? Which law comes from God? That of Moses, or your law?”

And Jesus answered: “God gave, by Moses, ten commandments to your forefathers. 'These commandments are hard,' said your forefathers, and they could not keep them. When Moses saw this, he had compassion on his people, and would not that they perish. And then he gave them ten times ten commandments. For he whose feet are strong as the mountain of Zion, needs no crutches; but he whose limbs do shake, gets further having crutches, than without them. And Moses said to the Lord: 'My heart is filled with sorrow, for my people will be lost. For they are without knowledge, and are not able to understand thy commandments. They are as little children who cannot yet understand their father's words. Suffer, Lord, that I give them other laws, that they may not perish. if they may not be with thee, Lord, let them not be against thee; that they may sustain themselves, and when the time has come, and they are ripe for thy words, reveal to hem thy laws.' For that did Moses break the two tablets of stone whereon were written the ten commandments, and he gave them ten times ten in their stead. And of these ten times ten the Scribes and Pharisees have made a hundred times ten commandments. And they have laid unbearable burdens on your shoulders, that they themselves do not carry. For the more nigh are the commandments to God, the less do we need; and the farther they are from God, then the more do we need. Wherefore are the laws of the Pharisees and Scribes innumerable; the laws of the Son of Man seven; of the angels three; and of God one.

“Therefore, I teach you only those laws which you can understand, that you may become men, and follow the seven laws of the Son of Man. Then will the unknown angels of the Heavenly Father also reveal their laws to you, that God's holy spirit may descend upon you, and lead you to his law.”

And all were astonished at his wisdom, and asked him: “Continue, Master, and teach us all the laws which we can receive.”

And Jesus continued: “God commanded your forefathers: 'Thou shalt not kill.' But their heart was hardened and they killed. Then Moses desired that at least they should not kill men, and he suffered them to kill beasts. And then the heart of your forefathers was hardened yet more, and they killed men and beasts likewise. But I do say to you: Kill neither men, nor beasts, nor yet the food which goes into your mouth. For if you eat living food, the same will quicken you, but if you kill your food, the dead food will kill you also. For life comes only from life, and from death comes always death. For everything which kills your foods, kills your bodies also. And everything which kills your bodies kills your souls also. And your bodies become what your foods are, even as your spirits, likewise, become what your thoughts are. Therefore, eat not anything which fire, or frost, or water has destroyed. For burned, frozen and rotted foods will burn, freeze and rot your body also (1). Be not like the foolish husbandman who sowed in his ground cooked, and frozen, and rotten seeds. And the autumn came, and his fields bore nothing. And great was his distress. But be like that husbandman who sowed in his field living seed, and whose field bore living ears of wheat, paying a hundredfold for the seeds which he planted. For I tell you truly, live only by the fire of life, and prepare not your foods with the fire of death, which kills your foods, your bodies and your souls also.”

“Master, where is the fire of life?” asked some of them.

“In you, in your blood, and in your bodies.”

“And the fire of death?” asked others.

“It is the fire which blazes outside your body, which is hotter than your blood. With that fire of death you cook your foods in your homes and in your fields. I tell you truly, it is the same fire which destroys your foods and your bodies, even as the fire of malice, which ravages your thoughts, ravages your spirits. For your body is that which you eat, and your spirit is that which you think. Eat nothing, therefore, which a stronger fire than the fire of life has killed. Wherefore, prepare and eat all fruits of trees, and all grasses of the fields, and all milk of beasts good for eating. For all these are fed and ripened by the fire of life; all are the gift of the angels of our Earthly Mother. But eat nothing to which only the fire of death gives savor, for such is of Satan.”

“So eat always from the table of God: the fruits of the trees, the grain and grasses of the field, the milk of beasts, and the honey of bees. For everything beyond these is of Satan, and leads by the way of sins and of diseases unto death. But the foods which you eat from the abundant table of God give strength and youth to your body, and you will never see diseases For the table of God fed Methuselah of old, and I tell you truly, if you live even as he lived, then will the God of the living give you also long life upon the earth as was his.

“For I tell you truly, the God of the living is richer than all the rich of the earth, and his abundant table is richer than the richest table of feasting of all the rich upon the earth. Eat; therefore, all your life at the table of our Earthly Mother, and you will never see want. And when you eat at her table, eat all things even as they are found on the table of the Earthly Mother. Cook not, neither mix all things one with another, lest your bowels become as steaming bogs (2). For I tell you truly, this is abominable in the eyes of the Lord.

“Take heed, therefore, and defile not with all kinds of abominations the temple of your bodies. Be content with two or three sorts of food, which you will find always upon the table of our Earthly Mother. And desire not to devour all things which you see around you. For I tell you truly, if you mix together all sorts of food in your body, then the peace of your body will cease, and endless war will rage in you. And it will be blotted out even as homes and kingdoms divided against themselves work their own destruction. For your God is the God of peace, and does never help division. Arouse not, therefore, against you the wrath of God, lest he drive you from his table, and lest you be compelled to go to the table of Satan, where the fire of sins, diseases, and death will corrupt your body.”
...............................

As far as using drugs,to attain cosmic consciousness as the link you made suggests, that would be a tough call. Your body is the temple and in that it is the crystal that you have been seeking.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=194

6/07/2007 06:56:00 PM  
Blogger acl said...

IC - No, Sokal was really trying to jerk people around:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

Fucker.

6/07/2007 08:11:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Three points to address:

Good questions, Shrub.

Founding Father Shrub said:

"What if Bio-Regionalism separates the country into autonomous statelets...some resembling Mark's Model, but others Dictatorial and Fascistic, and the Dictatorial and Fascistic states make war on the Democratic States with Mark's Checks and Balances?"

I. Military Checks and Balances: Nothing Changes

Another mixed question and mixed answer. Yes and no. Personally, I think to avoid civil war contexts (being manipulated from the outside to destroy larger democratic frameworks, which is the history of the U.S. Civil War) there should be formalized a process of legal secession. However, there should additionally be a process of legal inclusion once more. Both described in the book.

That "what if" of Shrub's question is actually already part of the original design ideas of the U.S. Constitution--despite embarrassed attempts at reinterpretation to the contrary. The point of state militias versus a federal military--with the federal government WITHOUT authority over the state militia*--was a direct invasion check against a rogue federal government army, period. It was additionally a check and balance against a rogue local state as well. (*Bush neocons federal fascists, with running dog Democrats, recently removed this major military check and balance in the United States. The Resident can take one state militia, i.e, the state based 'national guard' previously only allowed to be in one state only, and send it to occupy another state only under his orders. It's unConstitutional, though they did it, like so many other fascist-checks-and-balances-demoting things that they have done.

AS AN ASIDE

Another major one they worked on was the ongoing attempt to remove judicial subsidiarity, i.e., to make many judges simply political appointees fireable at will. That's the hot button topic right now. That's exactly what the Nazis did, politicized and crated a one-party state judicial framework.

I believe the gossipy case could be made that Bush attempted actually to murder Sandra Day O'Connor several years ago in 2003, to get some Supreme Court 'fresh blood' (in all senses of the word).

They were all seated and standing on a dais on a stage at some event. AS they pulled the cord to open the building, the whole archway comes down on them, sending several to the hospital.

Now retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gushed: "We could have.... all been killed!" You can watch it yourself at the link:

quote

National Constitution Center Ceremonies Marred By Accident
Independence Day Kicks Off With Opening Of Center Dedicated To Constitution

POSTED: 11:14 am EDT July 4, 2003
UPDATED: 8:57 pm EDT July 7, 2003

Email This Story | Print This Story
PHILADELPHIA --
FOURTH OF JULY
# Special Section: Fourth Of July
# E-Card Fourth Of July
# Survey: Best-Known Tradition?

The end of the ceremonies to open the new National Constitution Center in downtown Philadelphia were marred by an accident as Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and other participants in the ceremony were pulling the ribbons to officially open the Constitution Center.

When the ribbons were pulled, a wooden arch framing the stage fell forward instead of backward, as it was reportedly designed to do.

Scary Moments
Near Injury For O'Connor,Rendell
Stage Collapse At Museum Opening

Several dignitaries were taken to the hospital for what were called minor injuries.

The arch hit Mayor John Street, Constitution Center president Joe Torsella and Aida Ayala, who was described as a naturalization clerk. Ayala was trapped by the arch and then taken by stretcher to a hospital.

Street was struck on the arm and Torsella was hit on the head by the falling arch. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told reporters that he was able to step out of the way just before the stage setting fell.

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter said that the frame struck him on the arm.

All three victims were taken to Thomas Jefferson Hospital, where they were reported in good condition. Shortly after noon, Street left the hospital with a soft cast. He told reporters that he sustained bruises and a contusion across the elbow, but nothing was broken.

Constitution Center Accident

Street said that at first when the arch started to come down he thought it was made of Styrofoam, but it picked up speed because it was actually made of heavy wood and he raised his right arm to protect himself.

The accident happened after O'Connor was honored with Philadelphia's Liberty Medal....


There's a video at that link. Another day in the empire, perhaps... No evidence of any foul play they say of course. Sandra retires soon after. Wellstone didn't get a chance to retire.

Anyway. Back on track:

One example of how that military check and balance worked out, Shrub, is the "Whiskey Rebellion," which, closer to actual American history, was a military separation attempt just like you argued could happen without such a check and balance. It was organized through state elites currently pushed out of power in the federal framework (like Gallatin). It was not a cozy story of mere corn-raising redneck mountaineers fired up about their taxes on firewater. It was a pretty cold elite-to-base plot around Gallatin and others to inflame people and then to separate Pennsylvania from federal jurisdiction with military populism to back it. (If you really want to know how parapolitical and bizarre American history is just research Gallatin's life. Nice window into it all.)

Madison's view (who basically was THE guy who put it all together), was Shrub's concern. He wanted (and got) a balance of military power set up between states and the federal government.

I would only see a working continuation of that in the bioregional state. The bioregional state is more a form of bioregional commonwealth potential with rights to secede or join. However, in practice, in numbers is strength.

Note this interesting quote from Madison:

"It is often pointed out how different the contemporary world is from the one in which Madison and Jefferson lived. In those days what passed for tyranny was "send[ing] hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance,"[119] "cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World,"[120] and calling "together Legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant,"[121] and other such complaints. Even with the example of the French Revolution before them, Madison and Jefferson could hardly have imagined in detail the characteristic perils of the twentieth century. But they certainly understood the crux of the problem. After all, more than two thousand years earlier, in 416 B.C., the Athenians put the population of Melos to the sword, exempting only those deemed suitable for sale as slaves.[122] The lesson Thucydides drew from this incident remains persuasive today: "The strong do what they will, the weak endure what they must."[123] The Founders of American democracy saw the persistence of this Thucydidean reality. They rejected the concept of a state monopoly of armed power--"the most dangerous of all monopolies," according to Madison--****in favor of "the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."[124]****

---
http://law.wustl.edu/WULQ/75-3/753-4.html

So in other words the state versus the federal government is an intentional military standoff. It's meant to be a standoff.

It is intentionally a cold blooded check and balance on "the most dangerous of all monopolies." Not something you see admitted to in watered down (or cancelled) civics courses, or as a concern in the totalitarian dreams of the Resident's family...

To requote Shrub:

"...and the Dictatorial and Fascistic states make war on the Democratic States with Mark's Checks and Balances?

Then of course in that opposite context, the federal bioregional commonwealth would be the check and balance side aiding against that, and visa versa if the other happened.

II. Environmental Protections from Bioregional Commonwealth More than simply Bioregional Autarky

There are additionally wider environmental protections in numbers of bioregions working together, than those separated from each other.

On this same point applied in environmental issues, the point about a bioregional commonwealth more environmentally representative and secure than bioregional autarky. Let's start with a quote first:

Who remembers that famous "first political cartoon" of Franklin? Join or die?

I think the same argument can be made for bioregionalism, hence it is the bioregional 'state'-- instead of merely bioregionalism.

The working definition of the bioregional state is this "both/and" issue of local bioregions and larger commonwealth issues, instead of the "either/or". Instead of oppositional, it's complementary.

"...while not removing more generalized civil rights
protections of a larger national state."


Here's a sneak peek of a section from an article. I was 'commissioned' out of the blue to write about the bioregional state and bioregionalism in general:

QUOTE:

For a comparison to other bioregionalist sentiment, the bioregional state argues that all the strands simply have to be woven together and seen as collaborative instead of counter-oppositional. The pieces of the different watershed organizational frameworks will be useful. The bioregional state as well argues that a desire for more autonomy in local economic and political developmentalism operationalized as secession may be a right. However, such a policy will unlikely automatically lead to the local economic and political autonomy desired--without many additional institutions that can and should be added beforehand.

Far more appropriate, it is argued, is to adjust the frameworks of the state itself since environmental degradation is more interactive in its effects. Complete attempts at autonomy belie that smoke or water pollution will still continue to transfer from watersheds ‘outside’ into any self-proclaimed autonomous space. So addressing the externalities that are watershed linked and cross border is a common goal, along side (instead of against) local jurisdictional autonomy for development. Polluted linked watersheds or wind patterns from outside the “autonomous state” are little security that autonomy will be sustainable even if successful. Thus, cross border and cross-watershed agreements for protecting health, ecology, and economy for the insistence of local jurisdictional priority in development, enhance instead of demote it. Local economic developmental prioritization of jurisdiction thus can be achieved without discarding other aspects of the conflict resolution of a larger state. This may be more of a security for autonomy--than autonomy itself, paradoxically.

The issue the bioregional state argues is that the grain of the state is the important issue, the actual formal institutions themselves. Autonomy as a quick fix or substitution for wholesale makeovers of institutional issues of unsustainability is unlikely to be satisfying given the systemic interlinked quality of watershed and air pollution across borders, old or new. The working definition of the bioregional state shows this selective sense of autonomy, within a larger framework of conflict resolution:

Bioregional democracy (or the Bioregional State) is a set of Electoral Reforms designed to force the political process in a democracy to better represent concerns about the economy, the body, and environmental concerns (e.g. water quality), toward developmental paths that are locally prioritized and tailored to different areas for their own specific interests of sustainability and durability. This movement is variously called bioregional democracy, watershed cooperation, or bioregional representation, or one of various other similar names—all of which denote democratic control of a natural commons and local jurisdictional dominance in any economic developmental path decisions—while not removing more generalized civil rights protections of a larger national state (Whitaker 2006).

Since the supermajority of the United States, in term of a “local wing” of politics supports major ‘green issues’ of health care, ecological restoration, and sustainable local economics (discussed later), it is unrequired to have succession (though the bioregional state would support regularizing a process of succession). The bioregional state argues that sticking together is more beneficial, particularly since externalities from other watersheds ‘outside’ will still course through any self-declared “autonomous” areas. Thus from the point of view of pollution flows, as well as arguably, quality of life, larger states have their economic as well as political benefits to regularize processes to deal with health, ecological, and economic externalities conflicts.

On the topic of autonomy, the Second Vermont Republic organization holds some aspects of the literary Ecotopia in its seeming insistence that evil can be magically “placed outside.”

"Aside from the occasional whiff of authoritarianism, there are no politics to speak of here. How could there be? The Ecotopian worldview is of such a cultish consistency, after all, that politics are superfluous. Moreover, in this Rousseauian world, people are all basically good. Evil is in exile, banished to the old world beyond the borders. With no need of politics, neither are there politicians" (Joseph 2005).

Unlike the Cascadian Ecotopia or the Second Vermont Republic motif, the bioregional state is a rather hard-headed system of more ecologically sound checks and balances based on the original U.S. founder’s ideas like, paraphrasing “men are not angels, so that is what government is for.” (Madison 1788) Moreover, the bioregional state can address the fact that any society is full of political plurality, even among ones desiring sustainability. “Any ‘nation’ is divided. That is democratic politics. What is at issue is whether these divisions are equitably represented.” (Whitaker 2005, 88) The bioregional state is a network arrangement designed to protect that and represent that. The bioregional state is a series of pragmatic suggestions for institutional changes and novel institutional additions. This can be accomplished now: with or without succession, and even with our without sustainability at present, to move any particular locality toward sustainability.

Many autonomy-desiring frameworks leave unaddressed that the major perpetrator of unrepresentative developmentalism and environmental degradation can be any corrupt state itself--autonomously created or otherwise.

David Korten captures succinctly a systemic difficulty in most environmental amelioration strategies in a memorable aphorism as he argues for integrated and systemic approaches:

"If you see a baby drowning, you jump in and save it; and if you see a second and a third, you do the same. Soon you are so busy saving drowning babies, you never look up to see there is someone there throwing babies into the river" (Korten 1990, 113).

Allowing babies to be thrown in the river “next door” to one’s autonomous state or exclusively single watershed is hardly an ideal solution. The bioregional state tackles the major issue of “people who keep throwing these babies in the river,” in a way that helps a link to be established across a plurality of bioregional areas, all concerned with their specific ongoing pragmatic ecological self-interest. These multiple areas of local people in sync with common formal democratic institutions help in providing long term political institutional feedback checking and balancing against any externalities coming from a particular location.

This would make such bioregionalist state politics seamlessly cross-watershed and cross-bioregion--because flows of externalities, and politically stopping their sources and replacing them with more sustainable developmental material choices, are the more important issues to address along with assuring multiple routes of political feedback in case any particular ‘autonomous’ area goes rogue and polluting.

Mostly, politics against environmental degradation is always coming in plural from multiple locations downstream from an upstream polluting source or downwind from an upwind source, instead of being able to address the pollution exclusively by a desired autonomy of the area experiencing the externalities. The issue of pollution across borders and through interlinked nested watersheds are the major issue to be addressed. This can only be addressed by mechanisms similar to those argued in the bioregional state:

"...[A]ny additions to formal democratic theory that would make it a formal ecological democratic theory would remove the false sense that the state is only a ‘social’ organization. An ecologically democratic state is instead more empirically described as a formal facilitation framework for economic developmental issues and a feedback mechanism against unrepresentative and unsustainable ones....[T]o keep a geographically representative developmentalism on track for sustainability, it is important to consider that a state is always situated either within a particular ecology, or more typically, it includes multiple and varied ecologies, with the state manipulating them for good or ill. When a state’s informal politics contributes to its own ecological demise through expanding and underwriting externalities in human, ecological and economic health, it can hardly be called a ecological democratic framework or a sustainable democratic framework in all senses of the word sustainable, because this leads to a form of unsustainable ecological tyranny built equally from political economic corruption and informal socio-political repression against attempts to alter this ecological tyranny. This is the environmentally degradation process that is maintained perversely and sadly in the name of ‘formal democracy,’ as if there is nothing to improve upon" (Whitaker 2005, xvii).

END QUOTE

Nice questions, Shrub. Yes, I pondered those and the effects of different implementations.

Most the governmental principles taken for granted that we have now were once just a dream in someone's head--like Montesquieu, living in a royalist tyranny and excoriated in his lifetime by the powers that be (or is that "were").

I would argue we are just living in an ecological tyranny--that four different levels of additional checks and balances are required, instead of merely formal-to-formal institutional ones.

III. Humanocentric Greens

quote from a joke above:

"The first thing,' said the third, `is to abolish mankind.'"

Actually, humanity in particular locations is a crucial feedback against environmental degradation through geographic self-interest. However, that feedback is typically intentionally gatekept against via a state built on "environmentally gerrymandering" and gatekeeping out of existence such a local feedback framework of local optimality in most states worldwide.

Here's a link discussion to that issue of a humanistic green view. It has a critique of the "anti-humanist green" wing as a "Rockefeller in the Kermit puppet"--i.e., as adopting discourses of corporate monopoly attempting to stay in power without systemic change, by sponsoring wings of green thought that are equally anti-humanistic as themselves.

Such a 'corporate fascist form of environmentalism' is the endlessly recycled same old policy of the British East India company: anti-camerialism from the mid 1700s to the present. Malthus of course worked for that global monopoly organization. He taught "political economy" (applied policy) at their corporate CEO school at Haileybury. The Empire was raised on Malthus whose views of human suffering was that it was beneficial to their arrangement and he encouraged it. Malthus was the world's first corporate hack. India only started suffering from massive famines in its history the moment the British stepped in, though they British simply blamed it on some Construct of 'natural balances being reset, nothing to do with us really". It was just a convenient intellectual mask, however, as some British civil servants attempted to expose--and they got transferred out as a consequence (read the book below). The Same British imperial policies encouraged and just watched the "famine" in Ireland as well, in which food was being shipped out all the while from Ireland.

Their anti-cameralistic policy idea has always been displacing the blaming for killing and environmental degradation on the victims and Construct population en masse, instead of actually working on demoting the ecological tyranny really doing the killing and polluting through their political crony choices of materials and technologies and policies.

It's a huge displacement of the causes of pollution and degradation from the actual actors--to some abstract issue.

I will break from getting into a discussion of anti-camerialism British and Ventian Empire versus cameralist continental powers (Sweden, Linneaus was very pro-cameralist, that was why he started his whole 'life anthologizing' project (his genus and species ideas): it had a state policy objective aid for his Sweden from the start--instead of being some innocent project. Prussia, cameralist; France, cameralist (Jean-Baptiste Colbert). Over the water, anti-cameralist merchant empires adopted the opposite strategy, fighting against these cameralist continental powers. The former didn't care for the health of the people they ruled (divided across lots of different lands) and didn't care for the environmental interactions--and the Anglo-American empire's ongoing anti-cameralist mindset shows it.

If you want to analyze the dark side of the anti-cameralist British (into American) empire, a good introduction is Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts.

It's right up there with Internal Combustion.

6/07/2007 11:20:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

9-11 State Terrorist Insider Giuliani resorts to criminality once more to hide himself from exposure:



Reporter Arrested on Orders of Giuliani Press Secretary Charged with Criminal Trespass Despite

Protest of CNN Staff and Official Event Press Credentials at GOP Debate in New Hampshire

OTHER NEWS
__________
NY Police Report Bomb to Frame Activist as Terrorist

Giuliani Caught in Bizarre WTC Building 7 Lie

Brzezinski Exposed for 9/11 Culpability

Dutch TV Exposing 2007 BILDERBERG Meeting

John Kerry: WTC 7 Was a Controlled Demolition?

Hillary Names "Activist" to Campaign-- fmr. La Raza President & North American Union Architect

...

N.Dakota First to Ban Forced RFID Chipping

...


Aaron Dykes & Alex Jones / Jones Report | June 5, 2007


Manchester, NH - Freelance reporter Matt Lepacek, reporting for Infowars.com, was arrested for asking a question to one of Giuliani's staff members in a press conference. The press secretary identified the New York based reporter as having previously asked Giuliani about his prior knowledge of WTC building collapses and ordered New Hampshire state police to arrest him.

Jason Bermas, reporting for America: Freedom to Fascism, confirmed Lepacek had official CNN press credentials for the Republican debate.

However, his camera was seized by staff members who shut off the camera, according to Luke Rudkowski, also a freelance Infowars reporter on the scene.

He said police physically assaulted both reporters after Rudkowski objected that they were official members of the press and that nothing illegal had taken place.

Police reportedly damaged the Infowars-owned camera in the process.

Reporters were questioning Giuliani staff members on a variety of issues, including his apparent ignorance of the 9/11 Commission Report, according to Bermas. The staff members accused the reporters of Ron Paul partisanship, which press denied. It was at this point that Lepacek, who was streaming a live report, asked a staff member about Giuliani's statement to Peter Jennings that he was told beforehand that the WTC buildings would collapse.

Giuliani's press secretary then called over New Hampshire state police, fingering Lepacek.

Though CNN staff members tried to persuade police not to arrest the accredited reporter-- in violation of the First Amendment, Lepacek was taken to jail. The police station told JonesReport.com that Lepacek is being charged with felony criminal trespass.

Lepacek did receive one phone call in jail which he used to contact reporter Luke Rudkowski. According to Rudkowski, Lepacek was scared because he had been told he may be transferred to a secret detention facility because state police were also considering charges of espionage against him-- due to a webcam Lepacek was using to broadcast live at the event. State police considered it to be a hidden camera, which led to discussion of "espionage."

Wearing a webcam at a press event is not an act of espionage. Alex Jones, who was watching the live feed, witnessed Lepacek announce that he was wearing a camera connected to a laptop that was transmitting the press conference live at approximately 9:20 EST. When Lepacek announced that he was broadcasting live, Giuliani staff members responded by getting upset at his questions and ordering his arrest....

rest of article and video

6/07/2007 11:56:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

I'm sure Sandra could see some plausible deniability in that "accident". There is something strangely "Masonic" in the construct. The symbolism is there and of course, so would be the "hidden hand". Good link Mark. If nothing else, it sends a message.

6/07/2007 11:57:00 PM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

Here IC, I'm gonna do something you never ever do, and that's adress everything that's posted, sentence by sentence.

"Do you really believe that the view of nature that you share with the owners is somehow free from your worldview, "objective;" that things are the way they are because we're just so irredeemably evil?"

I never said it was "objective" champ. My views are strictly "subjective" & personal.
Alas, I haven't reached your exalted state of pure objectivity.
I am saddled with psychological baggage that compels me to give my personal experience a bit more weight than the babblings of effete intellectuals who make their living trying to convince gullible fucks of their "objectivity" so said gullible fucks can buy their books & keep said effete intellectuals from actually breaking a sweat.

"Let's see...you saw a rabbit getting eaten..therefore...that is so scientific! "

Never said I saw it getting eaten. I said it was getting mauled. The crow was playing with it. You know, like a cat plays with a mouse.
Looked pretty cruel to me, especially when the mommy bunny was making that odd shrieking sound that bunnies in distress make.
The crow didn't actually get a chance to finish cause I chased the fucker away.
Of course, I realize it was probably one of the "owners" crows, who, through a lifetime of erroneous indoctrination, has been misled to believe that a quick kill, while infinitely possible, just isn't necessary.

"If that's what you really believe then why bother with anything?"

I haven't the foggiest IC. Nothing better to do, I suppose.

"Why write here,"

Primarily to spare my wife having to listen to another one of my rants.

"why strive to protect and nurture your kids?"

I protect them because I love them. Anyone that attempted to hurt them would feel my 12 guage shoved so far up their ass they'd taste gun metal before I blew the top of their head off.

& I'm not really a nurturer IC. I'm more of a pratfaller. I aim to keep them laughing right up until they mature enough to realize how much their fate is inextricably intertwined with a bunch of assholes whiners malcontents & shit heads & all the fun begins to be magically sucked out of living.

"Why not just kill them as an act of mercy if you're so sure that there's nothing we can do?"

Sorry IC, I don't have it in me to kill them. But, if it will make you feel better, I constantly entertain the notion of apologizing to them for bringing them here.

"If you choose to believe the propaganda you've been fed, that's your choice--but please don't bother to explain how rational and objective you or "your" version of Nature are. "

Actually IC, according to your worldview, if I chose to believe the propaganda I've been fed I'd be mainlining some greasy KFC chicken-mush while masturbating to obsessive thoughts of Paris Hilton with a broomstick rammed up her woo-woo.

"But by all means, gloom on--I'm sure there's more of an appetite for dystopian porn than for actually getting off our moaning asses and doing something about the problems we face."

How true IC. Tell you what, instead of spending more time than anyone sane would dare being spit on & punched & kicked by societies abandoned freaks, I vow to glue myself to my computer & read every paper by every babbling intellectual that tells me what I want to hear.

Oh yeah, I'll set up some websites too.

'Kay?

"Or should ericswan just rip up his garden and slaughter his bunnies 'cuz Nature sucks and life's a bitch? Should Mark stop building alternative pathways 'cuz we're all gonna die? "

Ummm....don't really care what ericswan or Mark do. It's there lifetime. They can spend it anyway they see fit.

"What is your point, dude?"

What is yours, duuuuuuuuuude?

From what I can see, you've been typing here since the dawn of time, yet I see no appreciable change anywhere.

&, if you don't like that answer, you can see the one above.

"As to your question ("Shrub keeps hammering what you keep ducking & dodging"), I dodge nothing."

Well IC, given the bobbing & weaving of your post, I think you refute your own gobble-de-gook better than I could.

"angry gasbag"

All I can do is tell you what I'd tell my best friend when we were young adults, deep in the middle of a beer & pizza fueled fart war....

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, smell it IC.

"what's the point of doing anything if everything is so fucked up?"

See above.

"No, I would not kill. Remember my point about where morality falls down? "The ends can never justify the means because you become the means you employ."

Oh, I remember your point IC. I completely understand your emotionally detached intellectual view that you wallow in while your safe in front of your computer.

What I want to know is what you'd do with a knife to your wife's throat, your back against a wall, & your feet roasting in a nice hot fire.

Because if you're trying to say that if someone was trying to rape someone you loved & you wouldn't ram a rusty screwdriver into their eye or bite their fucking throat out, if that's all you could do, then I'd say you're either a liar or a coward.

Either way, I'm glad those I love have me to rely on & not you.

"Spew on, brother, spew on."

Thanks Dad, I will. By the way, can I have a raise in my allowance? And, while we're at it, can I get the car keys next Wednesday?
My kids want to go to the animal penitentiary & see the nice wild animals with the iron bootheel of man at their throats.

" Btw, how is that you're filled with love and compasssion when we're all so damned evil?"

Gee IC, as I recall you're the big brain who said I was "one of the good guys," or somesuch.
If memory serves me, I denied it.

Maybe you'd have caught that if I would have included a link to some academic with some long winded learned paper describing how I'm not one of the good guys.

(Note to self: IC ignores brevity, prefers quantity.)

Ok IC, now this is where you rotate in circle while shrieking hysterically as links spew from your fingertips like Clifford Pickover with a Tesla coil rammed up his ass.

"I see your true colors shining through.
I see your true colors....

C'mon, sing it with me IC.

6/08/2007 12:22:00 AM  
Blogger just_another_dick said...

One more thing IC, to illustrate the 'brevity versus quantity' difference that keeps us from hugging & making kissy-face I give you this:

While your idols are learned men who use language like a hypnotist uses his mesmeric gaze, mine is the female beggar I saw in Boston about 18 years ago.
She stood on a busy street corner, head down, eyes closed, hand outstretched.
If the folk passing her put money in her hand she said, "Thank You!"
If they put nothing in her hand, she said, "Fuck You!"
As i stood there watching her in utter amazement there was a non-stop litany of "Fuck you," fuck you," thank you," "thank you," "fuck you,' "fuck you," fuck you."

So, in her honor, & in recognition of the big lump of nothing you dumped in my hand, all I can say is, "Fuck you."

6/08/2007 12:59:00 AM  
Blogger surrender said...

WHY? WHY IS IT LIKE THIS???

“It has to do with the First Human Cultural Myth, and with all the other myths which necessarily follow. Until they change, nothing else will change. For your cultural myths inform your ethics, and your ethics create your behaviors. Yet, the problem is that your cultural myth is at variance with your basic instinct.

Your Fist Cultural Myth is that human beings are inherently evil. This is the myth of original sin. The myth holds that not only is your basic nature evil, you were born that way.
The Second Cultural Myth, arising necessarily out of the First, is that the “fittest” will survive.
The Second Myth holds that some of you are strong and some of you are weak, and that to survive, you have to be one of the strong. You will do all that you can to help your fellow man, but if and when it comes down to your own survival; you will take care of yourself first. You will even let others die. Indeed, you will go further than that. If you think you have to, in order for you and yours to survive, you will actually kill others- presumably, the weak,-thereby defining you as the “fittest”,
Some of you say that this is your “basic instinct”. It is call the “survival instinct”, and it is this cultural myth that has formed much of your societal ethic, creating many of your group behaviors.
Yet, your basic instinct is not survival, but rather, fairness, oneness and love. This is the basic instinct of all sentient beings everywhere. It is your cellular memory. It is your Inherent Nature.

Thus is exploded your first cultural myth. You are not basically evil; you were not born in “original sin”.

If your “basic instinct” was “survival”, and if your basic nature was “evil”, you would never move “instinctively” to save a child from falling or a man from drowning, or anyone from anything. And yet, when you act on your basic instincts and display your basic nature, and don’t “think” about what you are doing, this is exactly how you behave, even at your own peril.
Thus, your “basic “instinct cannot be “survival”, and your basic nature is to reflect the essence of Who You Are, which is fairness, oneness, and love.
Looking at the social implications of this, it is important to understand the difference between “fairness” and “equality”. It is not a basic instinct of all sentient beings to seek equality, or to be equal. Indeed, exactly the opposite is true.
The basic instinct of all living things is to express uniqueness, not sameness. Creating a society in which two beings are truly equal is not only impossible, but undesirable. Societal mechanisms seeking to produce true equality-in other words, economic, political, and social “sameness”-work against, not for the grandest idea and the highest purpose- which is that each being will have the opportunity to produce the outcome of its grandest desire, and thus truly re-create itself anew. Equality would eliminate the opportunity for true self-re-creation, which is the highest goal of enlightened beings everywhere.
And what would create freedom of opportunity? Systems that would allow society to meet the basic survival need of every individual, freeing all beings to pursue self-development and self-creation, rather that self- survival. In other words, systems that imitate the true system, called LIFE, in which survival is guaranteed.
Now, because self survival is not an issue in enlightened societies, these societies would never allow one of its members to suffer if there were enough for all. In these societies self-interest and mutual best interest are identical.
No society created around a myth of “inherent evilness” or “survival of the fittest” could possibly achieve such understanding.
For you have created a culture based on exclusion and supported with a cultural myth of a God who excludes.
Yet, the culture of God is based on inclusion, in God’s love, everyone is included.
And this truth is what Religions call blasphemy.
And they must. Because if it is true, then everything, all human conventions and all human constructions are faulty to the degree that they are not unlimited, eternal and free.
Whatever you have constructed in your life, in your human society, which does not serve your purpose in becoming fully human, is faulty. It is a faulty construction.


To decide and to declare, to create and to express, to experience and to fulfill, Who You Really Are.

To re-create yourself anew in every moment in the grandest version of the greatest vision ever you had about Who You Really Are.

That is your purpose in becoming fully human, and that is the purpose of LIFE.

(“Conversations with God”, vol. 3).

6/08/2007 01:37:00 AM  
Blogger surrender said...

Shrub:

Thanks! I got it.

Where I live, despair is a killer. Lack of hope for basic human needs has transmuted into violence and crimes never seen here before.

I really do not know why I addressed that comment to you, but I certainly appreciated your response.

6/08/2007 02:25:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Surrender, who is the author of this?

“It has to do with the First Human Cultural Myth, and with all the other myths which necessarily follow. Until they change, nothing else will change. For your cultural myths inform your ethics, and your ethics create your behaviors. Yet, the problem is that your cultural myth is at variance with your basic instinct.”

Our basic instinct is to learn to respond properly to any given situation. Because ‘properly’ is a social construct and influenced by our negative cultural myths, we make poor decisions all the time.

Schrub said;

“This blog leans more heavily towards how fucking insidious things are rather than how we can make it better..”

And thanks for doing your part Schrub to maintain the integrity of Jeff’s blog. I’m sure that Jeff wants to thank you also. No doubt it is the unswerving focus on the insidious nature of things that makes this blog space sooo popular.


Schrub, you seem to like to laugh at pea-brained relatives because they choose to ‘hope’ for some daddy figure to save them. You, on the other hand know that daddy is a bastard, and he stole his child after killing the real father. So, gloat over the ignorance of the religious; your informed despair is soooo much more fashionable. Still, both share the trait that some external agency is responsible for the messed up condition of this world.

Ah, but what do you care. Better to have ignorant people to scoff at, than to become informed as to the nature of ones own ignorance.

Richard, while I share your distain for the 'intelligencia', why have distain for intellegence itself? It is not true that all smart people are intellectual prostitutes. OK, most are, but not all.

6/08/2007 07:15:00 AM  
Blogger ericswan said...

Mark.. My take is that the conspiracy has been nourished and well fed ever since the moneychangers first showed up in the temple. The chosen used their distinctiveness to survive. The model needed others to exclude and the formula is still the only one in town. Our generation is really the first generation that has not been hamstrung by survival. We have leisure which I'm sure you are aware, was not available to your father's generation. But we have that leisure because someone else is making a buck a day picking coffee beans.

Richard..your rant was appreciated for the restraint that it demonstrates.

IC..I don't have bunnies. I don't use animal manure or animal labour. I like the Essene Jesus better than the Roman Jesus because He instructed us to His way which did not include alcohol, drugs, meat or money.

The bread that Essene Jesus ate was not loaves; His bread was the living bread. He sprouted wheat. He baked His bread with the heat of the sun. If religion is not your baileywick, think Schauberger. All natural all the time. The Roman Jesus said we could live to be 120 years old. The Essene Jesus said we could live to be 1,000.

What do you think will be final outcome of feeding corn to cows, cars, and construction materials?

6/08/2007 10:09:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sounder,

Your take is incorrect, if not incoherent, as always.

One thing, though, are you Jewish, or do you think I'm Jewish? Most articulate people realize it's Shrub and not Schrub, but not you. Sch is prevalently used in Jewish Dialogue, so I'm curious as to why you use it.

6/08/2007 10:50:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

So fun to provoke, if there’s a point, which I feel confident there is. Shrub asks why I appeared to be telling Richard to go away when, in fact, Jeff’’s house of horrors is actually more along Richard’s path (showing what’s wrong with the world) than mine (how it might be fixed.) This is the heart of the matter, isn’t it?

Now, if Jeff’s quest is contained within his mantra (“what you don’t know won’t hurt them”) this implies that the truth has been hidden, distorted, massaged, etc. and that we would do well to uncover the machinations of those right awful bastards. Further implicit in this stance is the notion that the world would be a different place if these machinations were to cease, presumably through the exposure of the truth seekers. Is it not an essential part of this search to wonder what this different world might look like? If we stopped at the uncovering stage, after having been so thoroughly brainwashed by the reigning paradigm that we had no clear concept of how life without the control of these elites would look like, then what difference would the whole quest have made?

The reason that this eternal debate between Richard and me is central to this undertaking is that he objects to the alternate world that I posit on the grounds that it’s unrealistic, unattainable, and based on a faulty view of Nature. The fact that he supports the worldview of the owners should raise some flags here. When I’ve tried to demonstrate who benefits from this mechanist/materialist concept of Nature (the military-industrial complex, the social Darwinists, the Malthusian economists), this central question—the cui bono? which makes us stray from the comfortless shelter of the official story—is derided as unimportant because my radical view of Nature is somehow suspect, flawed, politically motivated and out of touch with reality.

So let’s at the official story that Richard affirms with his passionately subjective experience. According the official story, the universe is composed of inert, essentially dead matter. Consciousness itself is the result of chemistry and nothing more. Not only are we exactly the sum of our parts, but we are also a sort of breathing automatons whose actions are strictly determined, like everything else in the dead universe. Nature is a savage, chaotic jungle where only the strong survive. Scarcity of resources is the engine which determines populations, except where the ingenuity of man intervenes to create wealth and order out of the unseemly and savage chaos. The free market is the highest expression of the natural order; the strong take the lion’s share and the crumbs trickle down to the lesser orders who had damn well better know their place and be grateful for their station in life which is given unto them by the noblesse oblige of the captains of industry as they heroically shoulder the white man’s burden.

This, then, is the natural order. Hierarchies which, after all, only mirror the great chain of being one finds in savage Nature. The responsibility of the privileged elite is to maintain the social contract, where authority is centralized and the unruly mob is controlled (for their own good, of course—they’re animals, aren’t they Richard?) through the most humane methods that the enlightened doctors of learning can provide.

Now, these are the basic foundations upon which Western "Civilization" is built. Very nearly all the vast mountains of what we call human knowledge support these premises. Given the degree of control exercised by our institutions of learning (and the peer reviewed paper syndrome is only the tip of that iceberg), it’s exceedingly difficult to find voices which challenge the staus quo. When someone like Frans de Waal does manage to get his work published, astute backers of the regime like Richard can even say that he’s “cherry-picking” his evidence, which is to say that he has no right to make his own investigations, gather his own data and reach his own conclusions because, well, hey, there’s this mountain of other data that’s officially sanctioned and…how dare he stray from the proscribed path?

Here’s another case in point. When I quote from sources I’ve found which challenge the official view of nature, Richard can dismiss them as ivory tower elitists or aging hippies with a grudge, since his own subjective experience in the world is superior in that we know he’s at least honest, and hey, whaddya know—the official story is right after all! When I quote Wm Kötke’s Final Empire (another of those subversive, Gaia-worshipping onanists Richard dispenses with so easily) and something like the following appears, we know we can just ignore it because these people have an agenda and they’re in the minority:

Robert Augros and George Stanciu in their important new book, The New Biology, survey recent biological studies that describe the self-regulation of populations. They show that elephants, for example, regulate their populations according to food supply and living conditions by raising or lowering the age of puberty and by shortening or lengthening the duration of the period of sexual fertility of females. Augros and Stanciu say that, "Evidence from other field studies indicate that the birth rate or the age of first reproduction depends on population density in many large mammals, including white-tailed deer, elk, bison, moose, bighorn sheep, Dall's sheep, ibex, wildebeest, Himalayan tahr, hippopotamus, lion, grizzly bear, dugong, harp seals, southern elephant seal, spotted porpoise, striped dolphin, blue whale, and sperm whale."1

There are many different ways in which species regulate their populations. One interesting study showed that all of the birds of the same species, in the same region, could vary the number of eggs in the nest in any one season according to food availability and species population density. In a certain year of low food supply all of the birds' nests would have three rather than the usual four eggs. Augros and Stanciu quote biologist V.C. Wynne-Edwards who says:

"Setting all preconceptions aside, however, and returning to a detached assessment of the facts revealed by modern observation and experiment, it becomes almost immediately evident that a very large part of the regulation of numbers depends not on Darwin's hostile forces but on the initiative taken by the animals themselves; that is to say, to an important extent it is an intrinsic phenomenon."2

In the popular mind the image of ecological balance is the wolf pack and moose herd. This image does represent the balance of the food chain but eliminates the cooperative and holistic elements of ecological functioning. While the wolf, cougar and eagle are dramatic and fit the imperial image of power and violence; these predators are only a handful while there are millions of other species from micro-organisms to redwood trees, whose populations are not impacted significantly by photogenic predators.

Life is wise, mature and self-regulating. The myth of the "red in tooth and claw" has distorted our understanding of nature, but by a review of recent biology we are able to adjust our images to the way nature really works and the way a creative and stable human culture could fit into it. In the contrasts that we have been examining we see that there is a profound shift of image from mindless organisms driven to maximize their numbers, to responsible, intelligent self-regulating living beings.

These are not academic biological questions; they are political questions…

The notion that the science of evolution has been appropriated & distorted by the ruling class to justify their predations is just too radical to consider, isn’t it?

Except…the ruling classes have been shown to lie, steal, cheat & murder for fun and profit and every level of our civilization. Economies of scarcity are not natural; especially when we can see the manipulation of these economies. Invisible hand of the market, Richard? Oil industry’s on the up and up? The fact that The 358 richest families own one half of the world’s assets is unimportant, right Richard? We certainly can’t blame the evils of our society on those who control it, can we? No, that wouldn’t be logical. Instead, let’s follow their playbook and blame it on human nature.

And all that wonderful green tech I’m always talking about—houses which produce more energy & water than they consume, industrial processes which make the environment cleaner instead of more polluted, transport systems which run on renewable energy sources, etc, etc—that’s all just bullshit, right? And even if they did exist, their implementation is both impossible (even though the elite don't really control anything) and irrelevant (because we’d still be murdering each other over shoes & pussy) right, Richard?

Yeah, you’ve got logic on your side, pal, and genuine emotion—it’s all just so much more real than these fairy tales that the State has told us to ignore. And, it’s so much more interesting to read; everyone loves to watch someone vomit on their computer screen to nobly save their wife from an anguished rant. There are a few questions you leave with me still, however. If you don't do what you do for the altruism, then why do it? Also, how is it that you imagine you're making you're kids stronger or better able to handle life when you tell them you're sorry they were born?

So Shrub: tell me how it is that Richard’s unquestioning loyalty to the official story is closer to the spirit of this blog than my finding what the elite have hidden. Tell me how his dismissal of the role of the elite in the mess we’re in resonates with the spirit of what you don’t know won’t hurt them. Or is that too much to expect from you?


acl,

Yeah, I know. The cool part of the Sokal problem is that he can’t deliver on his intention because his premise is so flawed. There is a difference between livingry and weaponry. You will in fact find different answers to different questions. Scientists & technologists cannot evade their moral responsibility anymore than anyone can--it didn’t work as a defense at Nuremberg and it still doesn’t hold any water today. That’s why I love that story so much (aside from it echoing Richard’s defense of the status quo)--Sokal only ends up making a caricature of himself.

ericswan,

Yeah, I dig that, too, but I don’t see the psychedelic sacrament as essential to the enlightenment, but as a possible or temporary pathway, until you learn how to get there without it. Old heads don’t need much to get high; wise heads don’t need anything at all.

The other element in this is, of course, the juxtaposition of the Pharmacratic Inquistion with the War On Drugs and the prison economy. (No, Richard, there’s no conspiracy here—people are just shit, as you know.)

6/08/2007 02:44:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

On reflection, there seem to be even more items left between Richard & me.

Please come back out and play, Richard.

First there’s this one:

Actually IC, according to your worldview, if I chose to believe the propaganda I've been fed I'd be mainlining some greasy KFC chicken-mush while masturbating to obsessive thoughts of Paris Hilton with a broomstick rammed up her woo-woo.

Not so. Many are the forms of state sanctioned pronography. The pornography of violence, for example. Yours is the pornography of despair—very popular and very supportive of the State. No change when it ain’t even possible, right?

Then there’s this gem;

While your idols are learned men who use language like a hypnotist uses his mesmeric gaze, mine is the female beggar I saw in Boston about 18 years ago.
She stood on a busy street corner, head down, eyes closed, hand outstretched.
If the folk passing her put money in her hand she said, "Thank You!"
If they put nothing in her hand, she said, "Fuck You!"
As i stood there watching her in utter amazement there was a non-stop litany of "Fuck you," fuck you," thank you," "thank you," "fuck you,' "fuck you," fuck you."

So, in her honor, & in recognition of the big lump of nothing you dumped in my hand, all I can say is, "Fuck you."



Actually, my “idols” are the people who are working to build a better world—the guys who are making things. Engineers, builders, the guys in the Biotecture crews. The theoreticians also play a role, and I find their insights helpful, in a blueprint kind of way, but it’s the ones who act upon the theories whom I most admire.

So what’s with the “fuck you”? I know you’re a feeling man who disdains “learned men,” but this is your response to someone challenging your assumptions? Well, you know I won’t respond in kind because I don’t believe in violence—your example of the crazy person attacking my family notwithstanding. You see, that’s a poor analogy because self-defense is not aggression and your passionate disregard for the facts doesn’t threaten me anyway.

You know, it’s kind of funny; I have enjoyed talking to you and I probably still will because you’re smart guy & all, but I have this strange feeling (I know, that’s your turf, but bear with the novice) that I’m talking to the media image of The Leader. Same Colbertian “from the gut” motivation, same disdain for interlectuls, same right wing memes. Here’s the paradox (that’s not too intellectual, I hope): I really can’t stand The Leader’s persona. So why do I like to talk to you? (It’s probably just more pornography…some sort of internet masochism or something.)

Peace, Bro! (And I do mean it, which I know you’ll just love.)

6/08/2007 03:26:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

1.

What would really be interesting is a bioregion filled with Richards and another filled with Cuttlefishes. I think Shrub would be swimming in the middle, unable to decide which side to go to; or perhaps a river island somewhere with a view of both like Huck Finn.

A friend of mine once visited a Caribbean island he said that was French on one side and Dutch on the other. On the French side, every woman was beautiful he said, in stylish clothes, and everyone was relaxing listening to a three hour political speech in French over the radio, in rapt attention for hours. On the Dutch side of the same island, it was an industrial wasteland with scraggly clothed people and lots of poverty.

2.

And can we say HAARP War in the Gulf? To hit Iran by this coming Tuesday.

What did you think they were developing it for, helping agriculture? Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tidal waves, may be the 'front lines' in warfare as the Anglo-American corporate fascists attempt to conquer the world.


newswire article reposts global 05.Jun.2007 08:09
energy & nuclear | environment

Unprecedented Katrina size storm bearing down on gulf oil region, heading toward Iran Coast

"Nobody knows what to think because there are no models to predict from. Could make an interesting mess...and some steeper oil prices.

The Storm surge shown (10-15 ft) will almost certainly hit the Iran coast - even if the storm weakens to a strong CAT 2 [this coming] late Tuesday (NY time).

The Eastern tip of Oman will likely also experience 10-15 foot surge due to the close proximity of the storm track. Further up the Gulf, before reaching the Straits of Hormuz - storm surge heights of 1-4 feet are expected on the Oman side, and 4-possibly 6 feet on the Iranian side near the entrance to the Straits.

Significant wave heights will be 20-30 feet, dropping to 15 feet near the Straits.

This is an unprecedented event.

NO CYCLONE has ever entered the Gulf of Oman.

And there are no custom 'storm surge' models available for that area. This forecast is based on my experience and subjective analysis of the seabed slope and storm surge interaction with the sea floor. Considering the region has never experienced a hurricane, let alone a strong one it is highly unlikely the loading facilities or platforms were constructed to withstand the forces - both wave action and wind force - that they will experience. Significant damage will occur. How much long term damage, and the volumes associated with it - can not be determined at this time.

Just in Time for Summer Gasoline Price Rise 07.Jun.2007 16:19
jail bush/cheney/all of them

One has to wonder how a storm manages to hit Iran just in time for the Summer gas "surge". this will of course cause supplies to dwindle (allegedly) and will compromise Iran. I would cautiously speculate that the capability of H.A.A.R.P. (high frequency active aural research project) in Alaska would allow for such a phenomena to take place via weather manipulation and that this storm as well as Katrina were operations by the u.s. military."



Thousands flee as cyclone closes on Persian Gulf

cnn.com
Found 2 days ago
MUSCAT, Oman (AP) -- Thousands of people fled low-lying areas Tuesday as the strongest cyclone to threaten the Arabian Peninsula in 60 years barreled toward the oil-rich Persian Gulf -- with southern Iran next in its path. Cyclone Gonu was expected to skirt the region's biggest oil installations but ...

6/08/2007 06:20:00 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

A post I remembered that seems to fit a pattern:

NAZI BUSH REGIME's ENVIRO/HAARP-REICHSTAG FIRE: seize Aceh oil militarily as "rescue"
Author: various
Date: 2004.12.30 12:23

Description: Why has a senior commander involved in the invasion of Iraq been assigned to lead the US emergency relief program?
"Lieutenant General Blackman was previously Chief of Staff...leading the Marines into Baghdad..." US Foreknowledge and Selective Warnings. Similar to 9-11, the automatic warning system STANDS DOWN to allow a terrorist act occur, hypothetically using the HAARP technology, to justify upcoming militarization of the area with US troops in an area rich with oil. Whether HAARP or otherwise, the associated issue would be the standdown of the automatic earthquake warning system among its subscribing member nations. This is CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE--U.S. ONLY WARNS AUSTRALIA AND INDONESIA--LEFT OTHERS IN AN ENVIRONMENTAL REICHSTAG FIRE TO DIE FOR POLITICAL GAIN, and then invaded oil rich Aceh with over 2000 U.S. Marines and two aircraft carriers with armed helicopters. No one tells the member countries about the "earthquake". However, the US DOES WARN its military base in the area. And from this military base, part of the invasion of Aceh is proceeding with TWO AIRCRAFT CARRIERS and led by the U.S.'s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq leadership. "In a bitter irony, part of this operation is being coordinated out of America's Naval base in Diego Garcia. The US warns its naval base, though fails to warn Indian Ocean rim governments. "...the strike group, with its seven ships, 2,100 Marines and 1,400 sailors aboard, also has four Cobra helicopters..." The oil rich Aceh area, which like Iraq, was suffering from a civil war making oil extraction difficult....

6/08/2007 06:31:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Mark,

The reports I've been reading suggest that weather control has been around for quite some time. One source, of course, is old Tom Bearden, whom I know you like, but you have to admit that his politics are a bit strange. By no means do I suggest that he's the best or most reliable source on the weather stuff, either (ericswan seems to have the best links on that), but those weird politics of his are kind of interesting in this light.

Before Bearden became the internet celebrity he is today, he went through some very distinct phases. I remember (foggily) listening to him preach an early version of his free energy/Heaviside-hid-the-scalar-wave-vector rap on Carbondale's oustanding college radio one night about 30 years ago while staring up at the stars on an alien rock formation in a place called Garden of the Gods after ingesting rather too much of some fresh, ferocious fungus.

Things were going weirdly well until he started in on the Evil Empire stuff, claiming that the Soviets had the jump on us in the fake weather department since at least the '60s, and that it was only our staunch ally and mysteriously high tech endowed Israel that had saved our Western bacon on more than one occasion when the Kremlin had ordered our immolation by death ray. How Tesla's death ray was related to Soviet weather modification installations was unclear at the time (although if you look at those pictures and imagine what states of mind might be induced under such circumstances it's no great mystery on that score). I also never got to the bottom of how it was that Israel had any tech that we didn't, but that was the story as Bearden was telling it at that time.

So, here's where it gets even murkier, long after any traces of that night have faded from my mind: why, if weather modification had been perfected all those years ago, has the weather been so obviously odd in the past 30 years? If those that had the technology didn't want people to start wondering who's mucking about with the weather, wouldn't they have wanted to keep things looking as normal as possible? I'm not just talking about climate change and the politics thereof, either. If you talk to anyone old enough to remember what the seasons used to be like in the American Midwest before the weirdness set in, they all say pretty much the same thing: somebody's fucking with us.

I suppose you could take the opposite tack and say that they want us to be on edge, filled with vague fears that we're embarrassed to discuss with our neighbors, but the unease that has spread is not confined to those who are comfortable with entertaining conspiracy theories. It started with the farmers, naturally, since they're still at least in contact with the elements, but by now folks all across the various spectra are talking about it...or was that the plan?

I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there. Why would they want to alienate their base, along with everyone else (assuming they really even need a base anymore, given the plastic, fictional nature of elections these days)? I was looking at these reports from 2004, which the Air Force tried to remove from the public domain, and while the stuff that Mark talks about in the current Storm Surge against Iran fits in pretty well with the plans they drew up in that link, it doesn't really say anything about the anticipated effect on the domestic audience.

Or is that all we really are anymore anyway--an audience to be tittilated & tormented by turn? Useless viewers?

6/09/2007 01:06:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

I was not aware of the Sch thing as Jewish, Shrub. But I think I am just a bad speller. Oh, and should I capitalize the S in your screen name, or is a small s sufficient? I love what you pick up on in my post, it confirms that you have no desire to confront your own ignorance. This is the point that I was incoherently making.

As to the ‘thanks for your maintenance of the integrity of Jeff’s blog’, -that was a literary device, called sarcasm. But here, if that does not clear up my incoherence, here is a little story. My family has a cat. I think the cat is insecure and gets a bit over-enthusiastic about marking his territory. We still love the cat, but he can live outdoors for awhile; and I am thinking of changing his name.

So, which is it shrub; articulate, or incoherent, as always?

6/09/2007 01:25:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Once again, you're talking in circles, Schounder.

Interesting how you and IC have to invoke Jeff in your arguments....it's like you're appealing to authority....and how amazingly hypocritical that is considering your respective world views.

This blog is more than Jeff...he's the catalyst to a robust exchange of thoughts, feelings and ideas. His posts are only one part of it...the comments make the day, though, IMHO, and you and IC somehow want to squelch that open dialogue. How shallow and controlling....it reminds me of....let me see....Empire.

6/09/2007 07:45:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

IC, I think this blog, and many others, have quite adequately proven that what you do know can't hurt them either, and Jeff's most recent post somewhat implies that.

Also, I never said that what Richard posts is more in line with the tone of this blog....my comments were specifically directed at you, not Richard. I also didn't assert that you shouldn't post here....I used that as an example...putting the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, but you apparently missed the point, which you do quite often because you want to put me, and Richard, into some kind of easily digestible capsule, and I'm afraid it's just not that easy and tidy.

Richard's not what you claim him to be....if you could look beyond his armour, you would see that. I've looked beyond your's....why don't you try to do the same with others every now and then. Come down to earth every now and then....it would be of great help in testing your theories.

6/09/2007 08:01:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

You keep doing the shuck and jive, schrub; it’s so encouraging for 'open dialogue'. Never address the point that is brought up, no simply say; 'you are incoherent, you talk in circles, you are hypocritical, you are appealing to authority, you are shallow and controlling.' Wow, yeah that is sure to encourage open dialogue. Gee shrub, if I gave a shit about what you think I could even get an inferiority complex. But I don't, and yes I will always talk circles around you.

Piss on bro

6/09/2007 09:01:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, but you do care about what I think, Schounder, otherwise, you never would have commented in the first place.

Come on, admit it, you love me.

I'm telling you the truth when I say you are incoherent, to me, at least. Obviously, I don't speak for everyone. IC seems to comprehend your message, if there is one....but maybe he's just being nice.

6/09/2007 09:08:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

I do understand that I am incoherent to you shrub. I also realize that my material makes little sense to most people, so I take no offence at that observation.

Still, if anyone is paying attention, they will find matters of substance that humans and society need to deal with. I have done my homework and it tells me that balancing order and spontaneity cultivates learning and positive life interactions. Trouble is, most people are invested in one over the other and this often produces stupid and/or immoral decisions. (And who wants to own up to that).

and yes, I do love you shrub

6/10/2007 12:18:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Shrub,

You're right--I must have misconstrued your point. I could have sworn that you said that what Richard was saying was more in line with what this blog is all about than my what-do-we-do-about-it? postings. Weird.

I also realize that I really went after Richard on this thread, but it wasn't as if he didn't ask for it, either. Look, and in case you didn't understand why I did that, let me spell it out one last time. I'm not appealing to Jeff or Sounder or anyone else for approval or authority; the issue is quite plain.

We all know that our chains have been yanked, serially, over many generations by those who run the show. This is not about some conspiracy theory view of history, either. Remember in Internal Combustion where Black talks about how the coal barons controlled the British economy through their monopoly on the single greatest energy supply? Creating artificial scarcity, arbitrarily raising & lowering price & supply for political gain, etc.? Not only that, but Black goes on to describe the same game with every single source of energy that has fueled every economy in world history.

This is a big deal for two reasons. One is that energy is the biggest racket on the planet; it informs foreign & domestic policy everywhere. Second is the fact that this scenario is a window into the nature of the supposedly free market. Even where there appears to be competition, there really isn't. Take Pharma.

They tell us that the reason that drug prices are so high is that research is so expensive, especially under the harsh & unnecessary burden of testing & FDA approval. Let's suppose some trusting soul bought this line of bullshit. How, then, would this pack of lies explain why the generic equivalents of critical drugs--the ones that people really need--aren't really much cheaper than the brand name patents that have expired?

We don't have to speculate on this one. I have an acquaintance who works for one of the pharma giants, and I knew my neighborhood pharmacist pretty well before he retired. They both told me the same story: quid pro quo. Open collusion. Company A tells company B that they'll sell their generic of B's brand name at an inflated price if B sells their generic of A's brand name at an inflated price. This is the "market."

You know the rest of the story. You know that industry owns governments; that the official story in everything from your textbooks to your "newscasts" is a pack of self-serving lies manufactured for the benefit of The Empire.

The Final Empire.

So where do we come in? There are plenty of anti-imperialism blogs & websites out there. Likewise with the conspiracy hunters. RI is somewhat unique for several reasons. It's not a platform for any particular ideology--most of us reject both Left and Right (at least as they're packaged & sold in the marketplace of ideas.) It's also not purely political or economic or social or cultural in its focus--the only thing we all have in common is that we know we've been lied to and the world as it is has been shaped to an unknown but certainly large extent by a very small group of very powerful people.

Some of us go in for the supernatural explanation--that the Illuminati or the Justified Ancients of MuMu (23 letters, of course) are the real forces goosing history--while others think that this just another level of careful misdirection, but it doesn't really matter. What's clear is that:

The 358 richest families own one half of the world’s assets. The world’s 500 largest private companies control 52% of the world’s national product. These 500 groups are richer than the 133 poorest countries in the world. Between 1980 and 1995, the total assets of the 100 largest multinationals rose by 700%.

Whether or not these vampires use secret handshakes or gain even more power through some ghastly rituals, we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they wield an extreme and incommensurable influence over our institutions, our economies, and our socio-economic and political structures. They have shaped the world in which we live. Not some dialectic between Right & Left; not the natural evolution of human affairs. Human social constructs stopped being "natural" at the dawn of agriculture.

And yet, we're told that this set-up we have is the result of human nature, which itself reflects the "state of Nature". If that were the case, shouldn't we be able to find innumerable instances of wars for profit being incited by clever baboons with a knack for propaganda? Once again, it's bullshit. The reason I keep linking that one chapter from FE is because it shows in 10 paragraphs how the current view of Nature has been distorted by the Owners to justify their control over us and how mainstream science (including jokers like Sokal) is complicit in the struggle.

The reason I keep pointing to this other path--Schauberger's Intuition--is that it provides an alternative technological orientation that will both save the planet and break these unnatural chains that keep us at our stations.

Now, Richard is free to say whatever he wants, including that the official story is true and that all these things I've said are not and that the elite play no role in how shitty life is right now and that Armageddon is way overdue because human nature is so hideous & vile...let's face it, Richard's is the majority view.

The problem, Shrub, is that if Richard is right, then there's not really much point in finding out what we don't know, is there?

6/10/2007 12:41:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Hi, IC. It was such a nice artificially sunny day I was outside mostly, hence the delay in comment. What I wrote is quite varied below. You said:

Mark,

The reports I've been reading suggest that weather control has been around for quite some time. One source, of course, is old Tom Bearden, whom I know you like, but you have to admit that his politics are a bit strange....Things were going weirdly well until he started in on the Evil Empire stuff, claiming that the Soviets had the jump on us in the fake weather department since at least the '60s, and that it was only our staunch ally and mysteriously high tech endowed Israel that had saved our Western bacon on more than one occasion when the Kremlin had ordered our immolation by death ray. How Tesla's death ray was related to Soviet weather modification installations was unclear at the time ...I also never got to the bottom of how it was that Israel had any tech that we didn't, but that was the story as Bearden was telling it at that time."


It's less that I think Bearden's politics as "strange"--given his line of work. Frankly, they are just rather normal and expected for what he did for a living. All it shows to me, if what you say is true, is that Bearden didn't really think about who was pulling his strings, since he was overly busy at the tech workbench.

Bearden was once in rather top secret defense corporate programs, from what I gather and his occasional admittal. As for the believability of the U.S./Israeli technological alliance, yes, it is reputed that lots of 'mininukes' were a co-development between Israel and the U.S., so it would hardly surprise me. I don't think we should at this stage fall into the trap of seeing the U.S. as a 'capitalist right' endeavor and the USSR as a 'communistic left' endeavor, which is what I think is what you mean by Bearden "strange in his politics" (i.e., frothing anti-leftist neofascist).

There has always been high level tech transfer on some things between US-USSR axis [cite Sutton's lifetime of work from the 1960s onward] AND presumably between US-Israel [cite Bearden mentions it; others mention mininuke development; and US-Israel wing did Nazi nuclear-radiation experiments on children 'ethnically unfit' in the 1950s quoting that:

"Deliberate EUGENIC based radiation poisoning of 100,000+ Sephardi children by Israel in 1950s. Israel was paid to do it by the U.S. U.S. supplied equipment. Israel organized the 'experiment' intentionally along eugenic lines. Massive eugenic-based head radiation on children.

And in the 1950s, Israel additionally sell[s] thousands of Yemeni children to the U.S., shipped in cages, to be killed in nuclear experiments--after such human experimentation on U.S. citizens was outlawed.

And more on the Transfer Agreement: a Zionist & Nazi co-dependency agreement as allies.

NAZIS SIMPLY MOVED AFTER WWII--TO ISRAEL AND TO THE UNITED STATES--THE AXIS FROM WHERE THEY HAVE COME TO RULE THE WORLD TODAY."


...

In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim Sheba flew to America and returned with 7 x-ray machines, supplied to him by the American army.

They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today.

The film made it perfectly plain that this operation was no accident. The dangers of x-rays had been known for over forty years. We read the official guidelines for x-ray treatment in 1952. The maximum dose to be given a child in Israel was .5 rad. There was no mistake made. The children were deliberately poisoned.

Yes, that is the subject of the documentary in cold terms. It is another matter to see the victims [interviewed] on the screen. ie. To watch....

To watch the old lady who administered the doses to thousands of children.

"They brought them in lines. First their heads were shaved and smeared in burning gel. Then a ball was put between their legs and the children were ordered not to drop it, so they wouldn't move.

2.

...let us help Mr. Deri trace the chain of command. But now I must intrude myself in the review. About six years ago, I investigated [another incident] the kidnapping of some 4,500, mostly Yemenite immigrant infants and children, during the early years of the [Israeli] state. I met the leader of the Yemenite children's movement, Rabbi Uzi Meshulum, imprisoned for trying to get the truth out. He was later returned home in a vegetative state from which he has not emerged. He told me that the kidnapped children were sent to America to die cruelly in nuclear experiments. The American government had banned human testing and needed guinea pigs. The Israeli government agreed to supply the humans in exchange for money and nuclear secrets. The initiator of Israel's nuclear program was Defence Ministry director-general Shimon Peres.

Rabbi David Sevilia of Jerusalem corroborated the crime and later, I even saw photos of the radiation scars on the few surviving children, and the cages the infants were shipped to America in.

Just over five years ago I published my belief on the internet, that Israel's Labor Zionist founders had conducted atomic experiments on Yemenite and other Sephardi children, killing thousands of them. Almost three years ago, I published the same assertion in my last book, Save Israel!. I suffered much scorn for doing so. However, I was right.

We return to the documentary. We are told that a US law in the late '40s put a stop to the human radiation experiments conducted on prisoners, the mentally feeble and the like. The American atomic program needed a new source of human lab rats and the Israeli government supplied it.

Here was the government cabinet at the time of the ringworm atrocities:

Prime Minister - David Ben Gurion
Finance Minister - Eliezer Kaplan Settlement Minister - Levi Eshkol
Foreign Minister - Moshe Sharrett
Health Minister - Yosef Burg
Labor Minister - Golda Meir
Police Minister - Amos Ben Gurion

The highest ranking non-cabinet post belonged to the Director General Of The Defence Ministry, Shimon Peres. [WHO IS STILL AROUND AND DOMINATING ISRAEL]

That a program involving the equivalent of billions of dollars of American government funds should be unknown to the Prime Minister of cash-strapped Israel is ridiculous.

After the film ended, TV host Dan Margalit tried to put a better face on what he'd witnessed. Any face had to be better than what he had seen. He explained meekly, "But the state was poor. It was a matter of day to day survival." Then he stopped. He knew there was no excusing the atrocities the Sephardi children [and Yemeni] endured.

].

This is presumably WITHOUT these different US-USSR and US-Israeli axes wholly cooperating, or perhaps even knowing of their existence.

In other words the ongoing surviving global Nazis and crypto-religious that 'operationalize' themselves in insinuation into steering US-Israel [cite: read Ben Hecht's Perfidy; or anything by Lenni Brenner (the latter's many books found free on the web); and yes, another Edwin Black book mentioned in that quote above, the Transfer Agreement, is a sordid look into the Nazi alliance origins of Secular Zionism].

So in short, the ongoing global secular international totalitarian non-democratic 'lefties' operationalized themselves in a US-USSR axis, just as originally secular as the US-Israeli were secular as well. (It increasingly, because of U.S. political contexts and internal Israeli contexts, began to appeal to the right wing religious sentiment in both their countries to cloak the secular elites still running the show. Thus those animating this alliance increasingly looked on the surface religious right wing, though the elites running the Christian Zionist alliance are still revolutionarily secular as they ever were. More on that below.)

The U.S. increasingly after WWII became torn with internal strife for domination of the policy positions [cite: an interesting window into this is the extensive Kay Grigg's long video on the Zionist side with the U.S. Naval Intelligence, Nazis, etc., blackmail homosexual sex, etc., I particularly found what she had to say about the battles to 'get rid of General Marshall' very interesting; additionally, research the Schachtmanites; additionally, note that JFK didn't go along with the Zionists and wanted to look into their nuclear arsenal. Johnson was more forthcoming and pro-Israel after JFK's murder--by Johnson's acquiescence and others; Johnson attempted to sink the USS Liberty remember, with the Zionists aid, to get the US-Israeli alliance into militarily cooperation of domination of the whole Middle East. Since the ship failed to sink, and since a USSR ship was watching the whole thing, the intent (which seems to have been to blame it on the Egyptians, so the U.S. could attack Egypt with Israel) failed to work out].

In short, it doesn't mean you are forced to befriend one side or the other. It's closer to both being your enemy, in my opinion, two puppet strings from the US across the world, throwing big ideologies and their clients at each other worldwide in controlled conflict. I tend to see it as two different internationalist factions both totalitarian and not really organized on ideology--only geopolitical strategies.

So--when I hear you imply that Bearden was talking US-Israel as some sort of a frothing right wing gesture, I tend to just file it away as insight into the contracts that he was familiar with and the networks of the military corporations he worked within. I don't extrapolate like I am only assuming you are that he was making a political statement, some sort of Likudnik or neofascist gesture. Is that what you are saying? You gotta remember, he worked for the U.S. military corporations! It's part of their corporate culture and job qualification vetting to self-select to hate the USSR
(while the people who ran the U.S. humorously were shipping the USSR their military technology of course [cite: Sutton Soviet Technological Development books from the 1960s; other book in the 1970s _Best Enemy Money Can Buy).

IC says as well:

"So, here's where it gets even murkier,...why, if weather modification had been perfected all those years ago, has the weather been so obviously odd in the past 30 years? If those that had the technology didn't want people to start wondering who's mucking about with the weather, wouldn't they have wanted to keep things looking as normal as possible?

First, Pentagon papers (around the Marshallites--Rumsfeld is a Marshallite) as well as UK M15/6 papers note that global climate change is #1 on their major list of concerns of these groups.

Title: Climate Change,Pentagon's Weather Nightmare,& ANDREW MARSHALL as OZ WIZARD OF 9-11
Author: various
Date: 2004.02.22 04:48
Description: It seems that Andrew Marshall is the strategist, while front men like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Bush, and others are amanuenses and factotums. In other words, Andrew Marshall is one of the people, like in the Wizard of Oz, of whom you are supposed to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." However, he is pulling the strings and the one making the plans--particularly the plans for the Pentagon's "transformation/revolution" in military affairs, that is moving the US military into a 'quick-global strike in-and-out' organization--using unmanned air vehicles and global satellite surveillance of all kinds. Notice his other concern: global environmental change. The public construction of the 9-11 events as "international terror" link up with the same networks of Marshallites that are concerned with global environmental change. The 9-11 story has provided them with their ONLY justification for the policies they want to implant across the world. Without 9-11, this Marshallite future would be dead on arrival. This is an article about Marshall, from information freely available around the net, with some commentary about connections and appointment in the Bush Administration that were in place for by 9-11-01."


It was only from the 1990s that weather things started it seems to spiral out of control, and thus more Marshallites got into power in the Pentagon.

Lots more money has been thrown into this, particularly given the "revolution in military affairs" that came in with Rumsfeld--with obviously a huge expansion of the late 1990s global aerosoling of the mid atmosphere to keep global weather patterns under 'normal' control artificially.

In the meantime, they get to use this to attack other countries. Owning the weather by 2025, means at the outside 2025, not only with 2025.

Second, I don't know what you mean by 'normal.' Yes, the aim seems to be originally outright weather warfare though increasingly it was tempered with the Marshallite 'weather buffer' concern of maintaining existing dominance frameworks and weather patterns against 'natural weather interference', of course. The same technology is utilized for both it seems.

Moreover, there are strange examples I have read about (from the 1980s?) I think of Eastern Europe areas like there were strange invisible barriers where clouds just wouldn't form, they would just travel toward the territory or state border and then disappear and vaporize over a test plot of artifical destruction it seems.

It has been implied that the massive drought in Afghanistan was a softening up exercise for later intervention against the Taliban.

The only meterologist I know of currently looking into the complete artificially of global weather is Scott Steven's

www.weatherwars.info.

Third, from what Bearden mentions, and from what I think I have written up in a previous comment somewhere, it wasn't until the mid 1970s that the U.S. really began to develop their own 'separate' weather control on the U.S. side from what I gather.

Then instead of working with the USSR, the group started to pointedly oppose it.

The recycled Bush II people in Gerald Ford's administration (Rumsfeld, Cheney particularly) in the U.S., threw down the gauntlet by refusing to mutually outlaw such weapons which is what the USSR wanted to see. (Then of course actual global climate change started to insert itself, and the tech started to be used for a wholly different backpedaling purpose to maintain things as artificially normal--though it's a similar purpose....)

This was several years after the CFR publications started openly talking about shifting global conquest strategies against democratic nations from 'frontal assault' to 'an end run around national sovereignty'.

The latter path meant through slow corporate treaty arrangements as NWO frameworks instead of military open empire.

Thus by the 1970s, amongst the internationalist elites the policy machinery was starting to fight within itself for global domination strategies very openly.

This 1970s strategy innately negated past working projects that had been avidly supported--and which had their own separate weather control US-USSR axis technological development presumably.

Politically, this was right as the ex-Trotskyite Schachtmanite internationlists (who go directly into the neocons) started to take over the U.S. from inside the Republican Party instead of attempting to work within the 'left' as before. They start to turn it into a revolutionary intervention party as operatively Leninist as anything under the sun they were opposing, humorously, only with a different ideology couched to appeal to and to solace the American right to encourage them to support such things as long as the symbolic politics were utilized to frame it as 'invading for democracy', etc.)

By the 1970s, the U.S. group refused the weather war banning treaty, which sort of indicated the break with a US-USSR high tech parapolitical alliance increasingly as no longer meaningful.

So while USians think of it as a Cold War, I sort of think of it as a form of artificial battle between different internationalist ideological factions for internal domination of particular key geostrategic real estate though not really different when it came down to it. Have you read that interesting document known as "Red Symphony"?

They just sold themselves on different ideologies to their base groups because they had ulterior motives, and because people unfortunately can be easily duped particularly if they appeal to hot button identity issues in politics (whether right or left).

It's similar to how the U.S. 'left' Democrats and the U.S. 'right' Republicans can get away over the generations with being mostly the same party in policy: because their followers are dupes. The Morgan interests by the way super-funded the 'left' in the U.S. by the 1890s. They last actually competitive election in the U.S. between these two parties was 1896. After that they increasingly attempted to appeal to the same demographic, instead of as before, different demographics.

Though the two parties are mostly the same in policy, it's their true believers that are really opposed to one another, instead of the party elites. They refuse to look closely at the tangible workings of their parties, despite all evidence to the contrary because their identities are all so built upon the 'internal fake Cold War' of Democrat vs. Republican.

I would support at the minimum a four or five party framework, to assure more competition, for only with more competition will you get more Local Wing expression through party competition via PRMA (proportional representation with a majoritarian allotment), and PR in the Electoral College Vote, by State, as well.


--

The US-Israeli Christian Zionism starts out of course only because of elite worry from the 1960s that the grass roots conservatives were taking back from the internationalists their Republican Party. So the same elites started to appeal, organize, and fund (cite: watch the videos at TheocracyWatch.org) from the early 1970s to the religious voters on the right as a secure base. The Secular Zionists had already found they had to do the same thing in Israel a generation before, against their real desires as well.

That is the origin of the strange amalgam of political opportunism from the 1970s to the present on the 'right' (so called): ex-Trotskyite neocons finding they have to stay in power by transmogrifying themselves appealing to fake religious sentiment. And the US-Israeli thing was packaged right into justifying their global empire sold with the popularized mantle of Christian Zionism religious sentiment. Though of course both 'right wing religious' groups running the U.S. and Israel don't really care for these religions at all. [read any Barry Chamish (very right wing by the way) on this); or note the offhanded leaks occasionally from the Bush Admin showing what their actual views are of the 'loonies' they say they are appealing to.]

Politics makes strange bedfellows, particularly if you are aiming to work ulterior motives--as these people are who are intentionally manipulating religious and secular revolutionary sentiment for their own elitist totalitarian goals.

As for religious politics, another wild book of parapolitical insights is right winger Arvo Manhattan's book The Vatican Moscow Washington Alliance. The pictures make it worthwhile: you should see the supposed 'anti-USSR Vatican' where popes for a while dressed up as "Worker Popes".

In the 1970s, just as there was a battle over internationalist inserts in the U.S. policy apparatus by different wings of that internationalism, the same was occurring in the Vatican, leading to different symbolic politics. This leads to that papal assassination for one.

(Just to spice it up, there's additionally a Rex Deus group weaving themselves in and out of all of this.)

Back to Bearden. In short, I don't think that simply because Bearden mentions something you interpret as implausibly politically biased, that it negates other things he is saying. I simply note that, if what you say is true, Beaden seems not really insightful on who was pulling his strings. You have to keep in mind, you could hardly have lots of artificial Cold War technological solidarity on the USSR or the US side in your tech workers--if you let them know you were basically betraying them on both sides by making deals with the enemy you 'required' in your national press to keep your people in line and to keep them up the false interpretation of leaders 'protecting' them instead of actually selling them out from day one.

(This gets into my critique of the very good though entirely surface political quality of much of BBC's Adam Curtis's films).

---

Back to weather war.

It's hardly strange to me that the Amazon has seen bizarre "cloud thefts" in its typical self-creating weather patterns. Perhaps the US is stealing Amazon rain to drop it elsewhere.

Still, the U.S. south is experiencing a huge drought right now. Look at this image.

It comes back to interpretation though from the outside as we are here: are we looking at successful weather manipulation or natural situations that they can't override? There's plenty of evidence--heaps--for weather manipulation, though I'm sure there's only so much water vapor to reshuffle around the world.

Remember that the U.S. decided on funding a "U.S. Weather Manipulation Office" formally recently? It's to be outside of purview of other government agencies... Another under the media radar thing there that wasn't really commented on much. It's right there in your face, only the controlled U.S. media refuses to talk about it, ergo, people don't talk about, it, ergo, it "can't exist because the media doesn't talk about it."

Then from your post elsewhere below:

"most of us reject both Left and Right (at least as they're packaged & sold in the marketplace of ideas.).."

....Which leaves me confused, since you were making the point I am making above?

6/10/2007 03:30:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Excellent post Mark, chock-o-block full of information and perspective.

While ideology may taint information, some of the information stands on its own. Or at least it can stand or fall independent of the ideology. People of the intelligencia use ideology to ‘place’ themselves, so we have no choice but to see through the ideology to the information.

And shrub; think of me as Picasso of the blog-o-sphere and you may be less frustrated.

6/10/2007 10:28:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Mark,

No, you're right about the plasticity of Right & Left. If Bearden was insulated by his environment to the point where he was unaware of the bedfellowing between his bosses and those of the "other side," then this would explain his naïveté. There's no contradiction there--look how many of us in the West were cheering fookin' Reagan as he pretended to be dismantling the Soviet Union. I'm sure that most of the public really believed the Cold War rhetoric. The cold warriors themselves--at least in the CIA and the KGB knew better, but the game had to be played and appearances maintained, right?

It was a little different in the East, though. My wife grew up in a little town in what's now the Czech Republic, and when the Russians moved in with occupation forces in '68 a garrison was stationed in her small town, not because it was a hotbed of political unrest, but because of its geography, high in the Jeseníky mountains, bordering on Poland & the Ukraine.

Now you can read accounts of what was going on there from Marxist.com, which is actually fairly insightful and even honest, but even that doesn't approach what the man on the street was feeling. At the marxist site we read:

In Czechoslovakia in 1968, as in Hungary in 1956, (where the workers actually set up workers' councils, soviets in all but name) the working class would undoubtedly have tried to move in the direction of the programme drafted by Lenin in 1919, based around the following four demands:

*Free and democratic elections with the right of recall
*No official to receive a higher wage than a skilled worker
*No standing army, but an armed people
*No permanent bureaucracy, "every cook should be able to be Prime Minister."


but for my wife and her friends & family it all meant something else: foreign troops in their town, shitty food & clothes in the stores...and who asked for a goddamned revolution, anyway? For a better insight into what the people on the other side of the Curtain actually believed, you's have to go back to Jaroslav Hašek's Švejk, the good-natured/depressed, oblivious/cunning anti-hero who embodies the Czech (and Eastern European) attitude toward ideology: it's all bullshit, a lie told by thieves to people who don't believe a word of it and just want to know when they're going to eat next.

We, by comparison, tended to believe our propaganda. I don't fault Bearden for his beliefs, insofar as I think I know how he came by them, but that doesn't mean that he was right, either. The one thing that you left out in your discussion of weather modification--good though it was--is the question of whether those PTB really care that we've noticed. As to how far along they are with the technology--who knows? Are droughts, storms and fear supposed to be on the menu? I know at least one of those items is always featured.

6/10/2007 11:13:00 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Thanks, Sounder.

IC said:

"The one thing that you left out in your discussion of weather modification--good though it was--is the question of whether those PTB really care that we've noticed. As to how far along they are with the technology--who knows? Are droughts, storms and fear supposed to be on the menu? I know at least one of those items is always featured."

Since it's still officially secret, I'm sure they care and would prefer no one knows.

There was that moment in 2000 when there was a bit of buzz that it would become above the board because of the desire to fund it more, etc. Then it was kept secret. I think Ken Caldiara [?] is the person I'm thinking about who was talking about this. He worked with Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. He went public concerning the public health implications and general ecological change issues of such geoengineering. He was concerned that ozone eating CFCs might concentrate into clouds in the upper atmosphere gobbling up more ozone, because of such tiny aluminum oxide seeding such clouds, i.e., he feared instead of a solution aerosol spraying to stop global warming might actually creating a wider feedback loop difficulty and rain down more ultraviolet radiation...



And an addendum to my state terrorism instance in U.S. history, mentioned in my above post:

- how could I forget the lie of the Gulf of Tonkin?

- and in the same decade, on the other side of the world, how could I forget the USS Liberty, meant to be sunk by high Zionist and President Johnson collaboration?

"Thanks to Peter Hounam's expose, "Operation Cyanide," more light has recently been shed on the Liberty controversy. The author, a veteran investigative reporter, believes the murderous Israeli attack was a set up to blame the Egyptians and to bring the U.S. into the 1967 Six Day War on their side. The Liberty was an easy target for the Israeli jet planes, which were loaded with rockets, napalm and machine guns, too. Couple that with the repeated attacks on the vessel by their death-dealing motor torpedo boats.

The bloodbath, a War Crime, by any fair standard, lasted for over 75 lethal minutes, killing 34 brave Americans and seriously wounding 174 others. (2)

Question: Why didn't the U.S. retaliate against the Israelis?

According to Hounam, the White House knew within minutes of the Liberty attack, that the perpetrator was really Israel (p. 94). On two separate occasions, the White House recalled aircraft rescue missions for the Liberty.

On the last attempt, President Lyndon B. Johnson told Rear-Admiral Lawrence Geis of the Sixth Fleet, "I WILL NOT EMBARRASS OUR ALLY."


[Actually, there is no official treaty between the U.S. and Israel, because that would require permanent borders and Israel doesn't want to insinuate that it is currently happy with its borders, says that once-President Daily Briefer--whose name I forget. On the Knesset building supposedly is written that Israel wants to be "from the Nile to the Euphrates." [i.e., Israel taking over Egypt to Iraq.]

"The Liberty was then left "dead in the water," without any assistance for over 16 hours. (3) At pp. 267-268, Hounam said: "Sinking the Liberty and blaming [the allied] Egypt and the Soviets would have freed Johnson's hand to do almost anything [and started WWIII in the Middle East you see]--even to drop an atomic bomb on Cairo. Trouble only arose when the Israel operation failed and the...ship stayed afloat."

[Thankfully, it didn't sink. As the real evidence went under the waters of the Mediterranean, it would have been WWIII right there, since at least some groups in the US were pissed that USSR was being an ally militarily to Egypt and Nasser. Or maybe that was a huge set up as well...]

"From the beginning, a cover-up of what really happened to the Liberty was put in place at the highest level of government. One of the men who is alleged to have played a role in that cover-up was none other than the father of U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)--the late Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. (4) Sen. McCain, like others in the mostly cowardly U.S. Congress, has refused to champion a full and public Congressional inquiry into the Liberty affair.

Hounam also disclosed some inside stuff on the "303 Committee." It was working on a project called, "Frontlet 615." It was later described as: "A secret political agreement in 1966, by which Israel and the U.S. had vowed to destroy [Egypt's Gamal Abdel] Nasser."

The military name for the operation was, "Operation Cyanide." At the time all of this was going down, LBJ's popularity was hitting rock bottom because of the quagmire that was the Vietnam War. [Can we say Bush using state terrorism to gain back popularity, deja vu?] One of his closet advisors was a Zionist zealot, Walter W. Rostow, his then-Special Assistant for National Security Affairs. Here is how Hounam described the Neocon-like Rostow: "A sinister, Svengali-like figure, or simply the biggest and best fixer? He was crucial in determining [for LBJ] which way the U.S. might respond to the threatened hostilities in the Middle East...Rostow was a hawk who believed in...the Vietnam War [like the Schactmanites around Senator 'Scoop' Jackson (his Senator Aide, Richard Perle, by the way, caught by the FBI in early 1970s treasonously passing information from the Senator's office to Israel--though nothing happens to Perle] and... his Zionism was strongly felt and expressed...(He) had daily contact with the President." Shades of Paul Wolfowitz and other Neocons, who helped to drive the U.S. into the Iraqi War. (5)


So here's that US-Israeli parapolitical axis showing through once more, mentioned above as having a technological shadow as well. Kay Griggs talks A LOT ABOUT W. W. Rostow by the way....

Another line of interest is that you would have to know about who started up "Team B" (GHW Bush and Wolfowitz in the late 1970s) to see where this Christo-Zionist cloaked US-Israeli alliance thing started....and how it's the same network around 9-11 as well:

"The whole Christian Zionism alliance framework seems to have been born of these guys. Plus, this ties in with their leftist global revolutionary origins of the neo-cons.

The revitalization of the CPD grew out of an independent group called Team B. Team B was authorized in 1976 by President Gerald R. Ford and organized by then-CIA chief, George Herbert Walker Bush. The purpose of Team B was to develop an independent [i.e, different policy plan for] judgment of Soviet capabilities and intentions. Team B was headed by Richard Pipes and included Paul Nitze, Foy Kohler, William R. Van Cleave, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham (ret.), Thomas Wolf of RAND Corporation and Gen. John Vogt, Jr. (ret.). Also a part of Team B were five officials still active in government: Maj. Gen. George Keegan, Brig. Gen. Jasper Welch, Paul Dundes Wolfowitz [WOLFIE!] of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Seymour Weiss of the State Department.

Team B was housed in the offices of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority.

The political base for CPD II was in the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a group formed in 1972 by the hard-line, anti-Soviet wing of the Senate, led by Sen. Henry M. Scoop Jackson."


Post the fudging of the intelligence on Iraq, it should sound like the same thing only 30 years later. The 'separate intelligence framework' sold the US and the world on the WMD in Iraq, just as the Team B 'separate intelligence framework' did the same regarding the USSR in the 1970s. Moreover, it's the same people on both occassions. And thus it was the Team B mindset (of which Cheney as well was involved) these were the people who rejected the treaty frameworks against weather war as well.

One thing that that USS Liberty link leaves out, gained from other really thorough information high military officer interviews from Alex Jones' summary on it, was that even the Israeli fighter aircraft radioed back in, say "no, no, I don't want to do this, this is an ally, an American ship." Then they were ordered anyway to bomb it or suffer court martial. So they bombed it.

The U.S. military side recalled Johnson on the phone with the U.S. Joint Chiefs--still attempting to send rescue squadrons. Johnson called them all off.

When there was complaint, the generals interviewed said Johnson screamed down the line, "I want that god-damned ship going to the bottom!" That was related by Alex Jones's interviews of various military officers regarding the USS Liberty. Johnson, as we already knew, was a bastard. Johnson of course was from Texas, and backed by Brown and Root--same situation of another Texan and Halliburton/Brown and Root making oodles in Iraq, just as they did in Vietnam.

In an ideal world, a pissed Israel fighter pilot team would have refused to be manipulated and swooped back and bombed their HQ's bunker in Israel playing over the intercom Rock the Casbah 20 years before it was recorded.

In an ideal world, the U.S. military staff would have had Johnson arrested as flag officers can do. Instead, they all made themselves complicit after that with their knowledge.

SO----

While the U.S. is riding offshore in the storm surge on Iran's coast right now, beware another "USS Liberty" incident.

There are tons of U.S. military ships like vultures moving in that area of the strange Gulf of Oman cyclone.

The storm surge is scheduled (for perhaps it was indeed 'scheduled') to reach Iran's coast by Tuesday.... And Monday is 6-"11"....Another 11 state terrorism number to watch for?

2.

How do we avoid complicity with this knowledge?

On the slow tarnishing with age of Jeff's catchphrase "what you don't know can't hurt them," into "what you ....know can't hurt them", it's not that the knowledge as I think I said above automatically makes the evil disappear.

Instead, the knowledge makes you complicit unless some type of action is taken against it after you learn about it. What's driving Jeff crazy I think is that he started this blog as a mere literary exploration and increasingly painted himself into a corner where literary skills are not all that is required and he knows it. He's not satisfied with his own insulating pessimism anymore. (Noted in his almost heartbreaking recent post).

Such knowledge does made you complicit as much as any silent followers of the Israeli military, or of the U.S. military who didn't do anything against Johnson. You do become complicit unless it is matched with some type of action. And you're no better than they are.

All this knowledge is I think to be judged on how it helps you affect action, and how well it makes you increasingly immune to such types of clientelistic appeals and manipulations. Thus, I think information shared here is "us" centric, instead of "them" centric. It's to make us people less willing to buy--it "inactive" in the face of their appeals--or "active" on our own appeals.

Perhaps an updated catchphrase would be:

"what you don't know can hurt YOU",

or

"what do you know can help YOU get out"

or

"what they don't want you to know is what is hurting you."

or, simply,

"knowledge without action is complicity"

6/10/2007 06:38:00 PM  
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