Santorum, Romney & Gingrich - Shit-for-brains, Fundamentalist Tools

photo credit to Huffington Post

By freeacre

I read with utter contempt the misogynist spewing of the fundamentalist pinhead Presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, on the “Right to Life.” The same for all the males that have brought their collective balls to the room to make rules for women regarding their most personal and life-altering decisions without any female input. Just who the fuck do they think they are? Oh, that’s right. They are men who have never had boundaries set for them over their right to dominate the female half of the population. These are the ones who have reduced the issue to a stupid, shallow catch phrase “a woman’s right to choose” or “right to life” because they seem unable or unwilling to delve into the subject any further. Like, it’s never been an issue for them, even though it takes a sperm as well as an egg to conceive a baby. Or, it’s so embarrassing - like being caught reading an issue of Oprah’s magazine.

How did this happen? How can Santorum say, for instance, that “liberals can’t be Christians.” Oh, but they can be war-mongering, fraudulent, capitalist pigs, and that’s fine and dandy. I was raised a Lutheran, not some religion that came out of some asshat’s dull mind as he was eating the Blue Plate special in some diner. To the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Methodists in my hometown, it was generally recognized that the Creator endowed humans with a brain that was supposed to be used if we were to handle the gift of free will. An unfortunate pregnancy was naturally discouraged, and the fact of it was often hidden and there was much shame and cruelty involved. I’ve personally known a woman who was hidden out in a shack in the backyard until her baby was delivered by her parents and then “disappeared’ to an adoption agency. I’ve known married women for whom birth control pills were not 100% effective, and another unaffordable child in the family was a disaster for the rest of her children. I know a woman who had to fly to New York to have an abortion in a home set up for that purpose by a local women’s movement group there. It was a hideous experience. Rooms full of cots with groaning, heavily bleeding women packed in there until they could be driven back to the airport. Abortions with no anesthetic. Much like getting a tooth pulled with no pain-killers except 5 mg. of Valium to “relax” you. Yeah, right… It was punitive, but better than nothing. I know. I was there. On the way home, a gold cufflink type asked me how long before I was “back in commission.” I’d have liked to shoot him in the head.

I’ll tell you something else. Women should not have to tell their stories. It is about the most personal and difficult decision a woman can make. She should not have to put her business “in the street,” as some would say. Remember the concept of privacy? It should be respected. However, let’s get real. We need women who have had pregnancies aborted to speak up and vote as a block against these fucktards.

Let’s ask a few questions. Viagra is one of the most prescribed drugs of all time, and the government and insurance pay for it. What? For men too old to reproduce? So, this is a recreational drug that the government pays for so that men can enjoy sex after nature’s hourglass has run out for them. OK, fine. But, then women who can’t afford birth control pills should not get help for their sexual challenges? Why not? Oh, because the evangelicals and Catholics dictate that sex is only for reproduction. So, should they be allowed to purchase Viagra? Or get vasectomies?

How do other religions handle the issue? Back in the day, I remember when The Farm, a hippy collection of more-or-less Buddhists, would deliver a baby naturally and for free. They did not believe that abortion was moral, so they would raise your baby and then give it back to you when you were better able to care for it. I always thought that was great. They recognized how excruciating it is for some to give one’s child up for adoption.

Hindus believe that a child’s soul does not enter the body until the time of “quickening.” That’s when you can feel the baby move inside. Until then, the mother is free to consult with the child about whether the child wants to be on earth under the circumstances it would be born into or not. We can do this. It is one of the feminine qualities that the original women’s movement was beginning to explore before it got co-opted by the CIA asset, Kissinger-dating, scum queen, Gloria Steinham.

I am not saying that abortion is no big deal. It is a big deal. To bear a child in this world comes with a lifelong commitment. It is the mother’s right and duty to decide if she is able to provide the love, time, attention, and resources necessary to raise that individual. If it would be safe from harm. The effect it would have on it’s siblings. The quality of life it could look forward to. The effect it would have on the father and what influence the father would be to the child and the mother.

Pregnancy can be used by women or men to manipulate each other into demanding relationships. I’ve known men who practically have no life left after a spouse took the four kids and dumped him for a boyfriend. Then the child support money all goes to the boyfriend. If he had another child to pay for, he’d probably kill himself - or the woman.

I’ve known other men who have a pattern of impregnating their girlfriends so that they will marry them. Then there are women who think of becoming pregnant as a way to get a check and be out from under their parents rules. Suddenly, they are defined as a “single mother” rather than a snotty teenager.

There are billions of different stories that go with all the pregnancies that have been. All of them are significant. To have them all reduced to the stupid, simplistic , sanctimonious, slogans is an insult to all women. To think that this nozzle, Santorum, is running for President of the United States with all it’s diversity of religions and philosophies, is an outrage. At least Ron Paul says that it is none of the Feds business.

I’ll tell you something else that is personal. I came as close to going insane from despair and grief as I have ever come after having an abortion. I hallucinated for three days - seeing bloody baby tissue on the surfaces everywhere I looked. But, I still think that I made the right decision, even though it was so painful. I had not realized what a miscreant the father was until I told him about the pregnancy. He really scared me. I could not entrap myself or my child with this dangerous jerk. Years later, I was still bemoaning the fact that my daughter (I named her “Lydia”) was never born. Then, she spoke to me.

“Mother, I am not lost to you.” She said, simply. Since then, we have come to an understanding. She is always with me.

Tibetans teach that children who die under the age of twelve have come into this world to teach, rather than to learn. We need to learn the valuable lessons that come from these most excellent souls. We need to turn within and listen. But, they can’t be heard with numbnuts like these screaming in the background.

MORE AND MORE INFORMATION

WHAT FAILING GOVERNMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURE LOOK LIKE. Old house in Detroit that was once an elite abode.

from murph

I’m impressed, I really am. In the last post, it feels like the amount of information that the readers of this blog are posting indicate they are taking an appreciable amount of time digging around seeing what they can come up with to clarify the general condition and explain some of the events they read about and the statements by the elites. It appears to me that there has been an upsurge in independent research on a variety of fronts. The veiled research by the mega corporations is being challenged, independents are coming up with very different data on just about everything.

I read just about every day, 5 different sites by people dealing mostly with the economic situation from several perspectives. I also get into around 6 other sites that deal with general commentaries on the social situation and then there are the sites that deal with what to do with the perception that our situation is going to hell. All in all, it generally takes at least 3 hrs a day to get through all of this. If I am feeling particularly masochistic I will spend more time at some of the more fringe sites, looking at “far removed from the contemporary” kind of information.

Often I will spend an hour or 2 following up on the links you readers provide and making comments about them. So, rest assured that either or both of us get around to going to your links in the comments sooner or later.

The consequence is that I often feel an information overload. Just too much to deal with. Part of that may have something to do with aging and/or chemtrails or god knows what.

One of the consequences that I figure many people have with so much information is what we call cognitive dissonance, the mental confusion from so much contradictory information. How one deals with this is important. One method is to just flat ignore or actively reject everything that contradicts your perceptions. Those that take the time to try and sort out these contradictions then have to deal with big time cognitive switches. This can cause a lot of personal problems, particularly if the switch involves life style changes that generally make folks very uncomfortable. I figure that we are going to be seeing a lot of interesting behavior changes in folks due to these perception changes. As the social changes become more harsh, I anticipate a rise in antisocial behavior; thievery, violence, outbursts of anger, physical assaults, social activism and demonstrations, etc. We already seem to be experiencing a bit of an increase in these behaviors in our little community. Not real serious yet, but what seems to me to be an observable increase. What about your area?

If this behavior begins to have serious increases, we are also going to experience an ever tightening of bureaucratic authoritarian control. The occupy movement has already experienced it. Syria, Egypt and Greece are experiencing it. The PTB and their enforcement cannot, of course, allow that to escalate. So their repression will correspondingly also increase. I lay all of these problems on two principle sources; money in the guise of the banksters, and the decline of energy and other non renewable resources. Until our allocation of resources drastically changes and our kowtowing to those in charge of the medium of exchange ends, it will only become worse.

On the energy side, some drastic changes seem to be showing up. The whole issue of cold fusion for the generation of electricity seems to have been swept up into a demonstrably usable form, at least in Europe. Of course, if this indeed proves to be scalable and inexpensive enough, it would revolutionize that energy source. Supposedly, from what I have read, home units are indeed in service, are affordable (as opposed to solar power) and dependable with very low maintenance costs. Supposedly, home units are supposed to hit the market this year. We shall see. If the folks trying to get this going are killed, all bets are off on this.

The whole issue of the banking PTB in charge of the world wide economic situation could possibly be resolved by a massive worldwide depression. Cliff High and a substantial amount of the economic community say that they expect it in March-June. Of course if a world war breaks out over the contentions in the east, all bets are off on this one. I suspect that war will break out for just that reason, keeping the moneyed PTB in charge.

Randy put up a link to a 1920’s anarchist and scientist that I found refreshing. Peter Kropotkin wrote extensively on how humans can organize themselves in a non-hierarchical system, which we call anarchy. I have written about this for some time. I fear that most folks could not stomach this at all. We are too used to having a very small minority of folks that are authorized (voluntarily or not) to tell us what is good for us and how to live. It would demand that people accept responsibility for their decisions, which sure seems to me to not be a popular position at all. Instead we have allowed (or in some cases demanded) complex control systems to take over our lives with a very few folks doing the decision making. In my case, I like to dream of a most radical change in how folks deal with their lives that would be more along the lines of a ideal anarchistic way of living. I don’t expect I will live long enough to see it and maybe humans for the most part are not able to live that way.

The worlds situation, economically, socially and government wise seems to be escalating in a downward trend. Freeacre and I are trying to prepare for it anticipating it to continue to do so. It is possible that it will cease, but looks like a very low probability to me. I do expect an escalation in harsh government suppression, worldwide. I do anticipate shortages of those items needed to sustain life, namely; food, housing, water, heat (in the more northern climates, most of the US) and other resources. If we have some kind of nuclear exchange, we will then have to contend with more radiation exposure. Climate change weather will also be a factor for more natural disasters and hardship. Polluted and poisoned environment will cause more misery. I see some very hard times a-coming.

ACQUIRING INFORMATION

from Murph


I have touched on the idea of acquiring information before. The reason I am going into it again is because I have been running into people periodically who have no idea concerning how they acquire information. I am going to postulate there are 4 levels of information.

1. First hand information. Your were there and observed. You are part of the insiders doing the investigation, doing the research, collecting the data, part of the experts doing the investigation.

The problem is, for most of us, we don’t have very much first hand information. For the most part, this kind of information is highly specialized and for the people involved in it the information collected is kept discrete and without relationship to other specializations. We aren’t doing the research on global warming, on the depletion of resources or the goings on in our government or much of anything else. We depend, for the most part on other sources of information. First hand information includes; this is what I saw; this is what I heard; this is the results (data) of my experiments. And, of course, if the experimenter and data collector have an agenda, this information can be heavily skewed. Even in the case of observed event, the observer can completely misinterpret and misunderstand what was observed. That is why first person witness testimony in jury trials is not absolutely dependable.

2. Second hand information. This is reported to us, through various means, from people that study the first hand information. If they are good at it, they give us the facts and nothing but the facts about the area of study they are reporting on. Reliability of the informant is key here.

The problem here is that way too often, this second hand information is clouded up with opinion and projected inferences of the data they are reporting on. Also, often agendas also interfere with this kind of reporting. Good second hand information gives you the facts of the case and allows you to draw your own conclusions.

3. Third hand information. This takes the form of quoting and interpreting what #2 reported on #1 information source.

This form in information starts to rely heavily on opinion about #1 information. It will often morph in unsubstantiated conclusions and even misinformation. Often this form of information is just pure gossip with little to no relationship to the facts. Listen to Rush Limbaugh.

4. Fourth hand information. This is where propaganda, spin and deliberate misinformation take place. This information takes all of the above sources and often utilizes them for an agenda. Again, listen to the Rush Limbaugh rants.

We are exposed to this form of information constantly in the popular media, the internet, and the rumor mill. Even those groups and individual that are sincere in providing us information have an agenda. Nothing wrong with having an agenda and putting out information to support the agenda. But the two need to be separated by the recipient. I suspect that often the reporter from this source doesn’t even know they are not being completely factual and thus draw conclusions that do not stand up to examination.

The inadvertent inaccurate transmission of information is legendary. Remember the school day experiment of sitting in a circle and starting a statement and have it whispered to each person down the line? By the end of the line, it hasn’t much relationship to what the original information was about.

All of the above sources of information can be factual and well analyzed or misleading or contain only half-truths or in some cases out right lies. I have been getting into to the practice of asking for sources from people that assert information that doesn’t sound right to me, and even when it does sound right. This is why it takes so much effort and time to try and determine what the truth of any situation/issue that I am not directly involved with, which are most issues.

I think we are all guilty of rather indiscriminant use of these sources without realizing it. We rely on experts and people involved for our information that may not be reliable at all. We also rely on people that supposedly spend time analyzing all 4 information sources to give us a synopsis of what they found. The difficulty comes with conclusions, projections/consequences and assumptions of the findings.

I have found over the years that most of the information coming from government people to be unreliable, usually contains half-truths and very often out right lies. It shows up today in bold print when the government economists issue pronouncements on the economy or when the president issues statements on the state of the union.

I often question just what is our advantage in acquiring accurate information. The internet today is full of enough information that no man can digest it all. My oft-repeated mantra is that I want accurate information to give me an idea of which way to duck to soften the blows I perceive coming my way. So far, the sources I have used to determine this have worked out pretty well for us in planning our next moves. How’s it working out for you?

The disappointing aspect of all this is that nothing substantial has changed. The information is out there to be acquired and acted upon. The totality of information I have indicates that our social contract is being very rapidly torn apart, we are progressing toward a totalitarian fascist state, our environment is being poisoned to an alarming extent, our society is consumed by greed, our eco systems are being destroyed, the worlds raw materials are finite and being squandered on superfluous bull shit and outside of a very small minority of folks, nobody gives a damn and no changes are taking place that will stop or reverse these directions.

Large-scale social change takes time and a huge amount of energy input, unfortunately. Humans are not very amenable to change, particularly if it is to their personal short-term disadvantage. If my conclusions have validity, then the question arises as to whether we have reached a tipping point and no action can possibly change the direction we are headed. I suppose that if there was sufficient collective will, it could happen but it sure doesn’t appear to me that is on the horizon. Our social momentum is too strong.

It sure would be interesting to me to know what the future historians (if there are any) had to say about our present period of history.

Considering the Nanny State

photo: Carson River, taken by freeacre

By freeacre


”Move over Big Brother! An insidious new group has inserted itself into American politics. They are the nannies—not the stroller-pushing set but an invasive band of do-gooders who are subtly and steadily stripping us of our liberties, robbing us of the inalienable right to make our own decisions, and turning America into a nation of children.

As you read this, countless busybodies across the nation are rolling up their sleeves to do the work of straightening out your life. Certain Massachusetts towns have banned school-yard tag. San Francisco has passed laws regulating the amount of water you should use in dog bowls. The mayor of New York City has French fries and doughnuts in his sights. In some parts of California, smoking is prohibited . . . outside.

The government, under pressure from the nanny minority, is twisting the public’s arm into obedience. Playground police, food fascists, anti-porn crusaders —whether they're legislating morality or wellbeing—nannies are popping up all over America. In the name of health, safety, decency, and—shudder—good intentions, these ever-vigilant politicians and social activists are dictating what we eat, where we smoke, what we watch and read, and whom we marry.

Why do bureaucrats think they know what's better for us than we do? And are they selectively legislating in the name of political expediency? For instance, why do we ban mini-motorbikes, responsible for five deaths each year, and not skiing, which accounts for fifty deaths each year? Why is medical marijuana, a substance yet to claim a single life, banned and not aspirin, which accounts for about 7,600 deaths?…”
from a book entitled The Nanny State by David Harsanyi

And, from Wikepedia:
"A nanny state is the perception of a situation characterized by governmental policies of over-protectionism, economic interventionism, or heavy regulation of economic, social or other nature.
The subjective term nanny state is typically used pejoratively, expressing an anxiety that these policies are being institutionalized as common practice. Opponents of such policies use the term in their advocacy against what they consider to be uninvited and damaging state intervention.”
And, from Survival Acres.com 12/31/11
“The global grab on the world’s food supply isn’t about protecting anybody. It is about making sure that you and everyone else on this entire planet is forced to buy something extremely essential like food from a gigantic Ag-business. These companies will have the power of life or death, something they already have now, but it will be significantly worse in the days ahead.
Even growing your own food, or buying it from the local co-op or farmers market is now at risk.
We all seem to think we are not at risk, because we are not yet experiencing the utter defeat being experienced by other countries. In India alone, over 200,000 farmers are already known to have committed suicide. The reason is because they are being forced into bankruptcy, having to buy GMO modified seeds from the Ag giants, who could care less about your health, your freedom, or your right to eat safe, healthy foods. All they care about is that you are being forced by necessity (to stay alive) that every dollar you spend has gone into their pockets.
Nobody has any idea how many other farmers have just utterly given up or killed themselves.
It’s getting serious folks. If you want to survive into the future, then you are going to have to start helping yourselves.
I’ve seen ZERO evidence that the best interests of the people are being supported. What I have seen however, is agency after agency, government after government, and entity after entity being arrayed against the individual and collective rights of the people in a non-stop fashion, forcing us all into a tighter and tighter grip.”
Our last post, from Belgium, has had me mulling over several aspects of freedom. On the one hand, the pejorative term, “Nanny State”, signals more than simple meddling in personal affairs. It encourages a callous disregard for the thoughts, rights, decisions and feelings of others. I overheard a couple of grocery clerks chortling about the cost of cigarettes rising three dollars a pack next year. “Well, ha ha, I guess that’s going to make some more people quit smoking…” he said with a satisfied smirk. Is this a blatant infringement of my civil liberty? Yes, by God, it is. But, they could care less. Shaping behavior by raising prices translates into the rich being able to afford to do whatever they want, while for the rest of us, the politically correct is mandatory.
Parenthetically, “Nanny State” also includes a derision of the Feminine influence – as if nannies are stupid cows that spoil children and don’t know the real world…
But, is there no role in government for the protection of its citizenry? Yes, of course there is. The Federal government is mandated in the constitution to protect our borders and to provide for the national defense. The power of the federal government is supposed to be aimed at large forces (corporations, big banks, foreign armies, etc.) that would curtail our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Big corporate entities like Agra-business, Big Pharmaceuticals, and the Central Banks cannot be fought by individual efforts alone. In my opinion, it is the duty of the congress to monitor the globalist fraudsters and polluters and protect the rights of the common citizen and the planet we hold in common.
But, of course, just the opposite is happening. The foxes (lobbyists, miscreants and minions) are ruling the hen house, and our rights are systematically destroyed.
Furthermore, the agencies, which are supposed to be protecting us, like the DEQ or the EPA or FEMA are actively working for the misanthropic mutants. So, the DEQ in Oregon is concerned with NITRATES in the water (which is almost totally harmless) and not the hormones, toxic pesticides, antibiotics, and chemical runoff that corporations are guilty of spewing into the environment. Or, the EPA just ruled that they won’t go after Big Agra for over-medicating healthy cattle, which is creating ever more virulent diseases. Eighty percent of the antibiotics used in this nation are given to animals we eat.
It looks to me like the people in these agencies “help” the country by collecting their substantial paychecks and spending them on big-ticket items, vacation homes, ski trips, and luxuries whether they do anything good for people and the planet or not.
The “nanny state” term is also used with great animosity toward the social welfare system as well as the social security system. Programs which were sold in the 60’s, like The War on Poverty” have been dismal failures. The endless rules and more and more entanglements have created two generations of dependence and dysfunction. I bet about the same percentage of those on welfare are married as were married on the plantations. Two parent families don’t qualify for welfare. “Get a divorce” Is the advise from the social workers. So much for “family values” and caring about the state of families in this country.
Come to think of it, any of these so-called “wars” seem to be false. The war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terror… all rackets that take their tolls on all of us.
The hypocrisy never stops. Liberal Dems are “shocked….shocked!” if anyone utters “racist” terms - but do nothing about laws that incarcerate a third of the black men in this country and leave them ineligible for much of anything other than to distribute drugs to enrich the Rich and enslave their brothers and sisters.
And they funnel the rest of the working class kids into the military by offering the carrot of a job, career, or education in a skilled trade. Or they indenture themselves for years in the hope of a professional career.

Meanwhile, the wisdom of the Mother State is never advanced. There is one, you know, or could be. A state based on the natural law that mothers love all their children. The baby cries, the mother lactates. She can’t do otherwise. She doesn’t care for and nurture her offspring so that they can be dependent on her forever. She raises them to grow up to be free men and women with a sense of their talents and capabilities and a responsibility for and to their world. And, She provides them with the knowledge and opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.
As the paternalistic, militaristic, and materialistic world we know continues to deteriorate, now is a good time to imagine what we would like to create in its place. I think it would start with the balancing of masculine and feminine “energies” that p often refers to, and their practical applications in our world.
It would begin by considering ourselves to be Human Beings first and foremost. We have done it before. Somewhere within we can feel the memories.

Freedom and Order

photo credit to blogodak.com

from Belgium (sats)

It is not usual for me to talk about film reviews in a piece like this however sometimes a piece from a film strikes you as significant or starts a thought process. So it was with the film Satantango (Satan's Tango) by Bella Tarr. It is a hell of a film and is only for the very brave. The storyline is not linear, rather it goes backward and forward like tango dancers. The reason it is a hell of a film is that with a quick coffee break and a quick WC break it is eight hours long. That means you go into the cinema at 2 in the afternoon and come out at 10 at night, unless like me you watch it on DVD. It is shot in glorious black and white, the spoken language is Hungarian (Magyar) with English under text and during the whole film there is practically no action to speak of apart of the consistency of the rain falling on the quagmire of the Hungarian plain in winter. Having said that, the whole experience affected me greatly and even a month after seeing it I was still thinking of the significance of various parts. The film deals with life after the collapse of communism in Hungary. A group of people try to sell their collective and use the money to become 'free' however the silver tongued Irimias (I-ra-me-as) who everybody thought was dead, turns up and persuades the group to reinvest in a more modern farm somewhere else. He has such eloquence almost everybody agrees, thus placing themselves in a hierarchy under his control. I was going to be nice and call Irimias a false prophet of hope but he is in fact a con man. Because he doesn't work but always seems to have money he and his sidekick Petrina are summoned before the Police Captain to see if they should be turned over to the tax authorities. As it turns out, the police captain lets them off the hook provided they do some spying for him. During the course of the conversation the Captain comes out with the following monologue, which was the starting point for the current post.


"Captain: Not that human life was so highly valued. Keeping order appears to be the business of the authorities, but in fact it's the business of all. Order. Freedom, however, has nothing human. It's something divine, something... our lives are too short for us to know properly. If you're looking for a link, think of Pericles, order and freedom are linked by passion. We have to believe in both, we suffer from both. Both from order and freedom. But human life is meaningful, rich, beautiful and filthy. It links everything. It mistreats freedom only... wasting it, as if it was junk. People don't like freedom, they are afraid of it. The strange thing is there is nothing to fear about freedom... order, on the other hand, can often be frightening."


Hmm, I think this is one of the most profound pieces of dialogue I have ever heard but is it true? There are probably as many meanings of freedom as there are people so let us see if we can come up with a definition which is universally acceptable. Then we can have a look at social order and see if there is any link between the two. Freedom is such a simple word, probably too simple, that we automatically assume we know what it means.
At the end of the last World War the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made an election broadcast on the radio in which he expressed the view that now the Allies had won the war, the world was free from the tyranny of the Third Rich. Replying the next night Clement Atlee for the opposition said “Mr Churchill has made much of the concept of freedom but it was not many years ago that employers were free to send little children climbing up the inside of chimneys. Is that the sort of freedom to which we wish to return?” This demonstrates that the word is not such an easy take.

Here are Murph's thoughts on the subject from ibid April 2008, which are about as broad as you can get and are difficult for anyone (me at least) to take issue with.

“It would seem obvious to me that a concept of total freedom of action when living in groups cannot work. Being by yourself in the wilderness is not how most of us live. More power to those that do so. The early mountain men were about as free as you can get. But, some enforceable means has to exist to impede those who do not respect others right to freedom within a social context. I sum it up this way; you cannot perform an action which takes away from or restricts another persons freedom, that is, you cannot harm another or their property, and I include the environment. That simple edict would automatically stop environmental degradation, exploitation and legal thievery.”

So, summarising, you can do anything you like so long as it does not harm another or the environment.

Not that many of us are mountain men, in fact most of us in the 'developed' world live in industrialised countries. We live in conurbations from small villages to great cities where by and large we all have to get along with one another. The tighter we pack ourselves the more chaffing occurs which impacts on others rights to do as they like.

Most people do not see that there is a problem with freedom because they believe that they are already free. They feel they have a right to improve their lives, which indeed they do however they exercise this right by placing themselves under almost life-long obligations to financial institutions. What most don't realise is that for a mortgage for instance, for every dollar they borrow over the term of the loan they will pay two dollars in interest. Even if they do realise it they figure there is little they can do about it if they want a place of their own to live. Most buyers do not choose a place that fulfils their spacial needs for a modest price but are influenced by peer pressure to buy the most expensive they can afford. Another thing not commonly realised is that the sort of new properties projected at the aspiring owners are not priced on a cost plus basis but on what is the greatest proportion of average income they can afford to miss and still get by on. That is until negative equity comes along and they suddenly realise that the freedom to own a home does not apply to them. There are only so many times a loan can be restructured before the debt becomes overwhelming. A similar system operates with credit cards, it is only the matter of degree that is different. The minimum repayment is designed so that the interest is on a continuous roll and the principle sum is never paid off. So much for taking the waiting out of wanting.

If people grow up within a system which everybody regards as normal they never realise there may even be a problem with it. So it is with Federal Reserve Notes, or Euros or in fact with the majority of the worlds currencies. In every country which has a national bank, that bank issues the local currency which it prints out of paper and ink and apart from the cost of the building and the printing workers, that is the only cost to the bank. It costs exactly the same to make a hundred dollar bill as it does to make a one dollar bill but the bank sells the currency to the government at the face value of the bill. Not only that but the bank charges the government interest on the currency whilst it is in circulation. You are only allowed one guess where the government gets the money to pay for this. And all the time you thought your taxes went to pay for infrastructure. So where does the money for infrastructure come from? Well that is also borrowed from the national bank as well and the repayments are recouped through income and sales taxes. What alternatives do people have if they don't want the banks to appropriate the benefits of their hourly labour? Well there are Credit Unions. It is very difficult for the government to place a tax on sea shells or chittys for a number of hours worked or what ever else may be used in place of money. The down side is that it is very difficult to buy a Japanese car or any other consumer item with a currency which is not nationally or internationally recognised. Not only this but the pressure on such systems to conform to the national standard is enormous. A question then arises if people participating in such alternatives should be allowed to enjoy the infrastructure paid for by others. Should they be allowed to travel over a bridge which they have not paid for or must they do a twenty mile detour or should they be defended by a national military to which they have not contributed? Allowing the bankers to skim the fruits of your labour is a system which is very difficult to opt out from. As employers were free to send children working up chimneys so also are you free to give the banks a portion of your income. You might not consider this to be much of a freedom and you might be right but it is the system with which most of us are forced to conform.

Over the years, commentators here have bemoaned inflation, the invisible tax. Even though the standard of living has improved over time, the quantity of things that can be bought with a weeks wage has decreased. We have long said that grandfather could work to support a home, a wife and a house full of kids. Then couples decided to leave the kids until until they had filled their house with stuff. When it was realised that women were willing to go out to work, with a bit of strategic nudging, the elite bankers began the femanist movement in order to farm two lots of taxible income instead of one. Where as previously, the second income was there to provide extras, inflation now ensures that the second income is necessary for the family just to get by. The elites are currently progressing onwards and upwards with their unfettered greed. Throughout Europe in general and Belgium in particular the countries have been so reduced by the rolling financial cricis that there is a move by governments to increase the pension age by two years to 67 for men and correspondingly for women. At present there are one day protest strike actions but if something is not done about this increasing disparity of those on either side of the zero sum game then this could develop into Europes Occupy Movement. I don't know how things will pan out but if the situation is left to fester I can't see the Europeans being as genteel as the Occupiers. The elites are becoming more brazen with their stick prodding. Maybe they are anxious to take their new crowd control toys out of their boxes.

Nearly everybody knows that there are three branches of government. The one I am interested in here is the legislature. In the case of the USA this is The Congress and its job is to enact new laws as it sees fit. It has been estimated that the USA has at least a quarter of a million statute laws. Every one of these inhibits a freedom either by denying an action or making an action compulsory. A law is the removal of a freedom, as it dictates that there is something you cannot or must do. If the former, you're not free to do it; if the latter, you're not free to do otherwise. You will probably ask if laws are not for the benefit of all? After all not killing another, God knows it might be you on the receiving end, or not stealing another's property is clearly to the greater good. The purpose of other laws is more moot. Is it to your benefit to have your private telephone conversations listened to by a government body or every e mail read? Is it to your benefit for any US citizen to be withheld indefinitely without trial or even access to a lawyer, yet according to the Military Commissions Act this is the state of US law as it stands at present. Clearly many of the newer laws have less to do with the public good and more to do with controlling the population, thus giving the government more power and the citizenry less. In former times the legislature made just laws, now it just makes laws. This begs the question of who works for whom and why we allow a system in which our freedoms are balanced against us. As an exercise I did try to find a league table of the number of statute laws by country as a measure of which ones were freer than others but if such a table exists I could not find it.

Because the USA does not adequately provide for health care as other countries do, people are forced into very expensive substandard health care where people are obliged to do battle with insurance companies at a time they are least able. This is a clear case of butter or guns; a healthy nation or shiny missiles in a silo. Even if you are dying because you cannot afford appropriate medicines, you are free to know we will get our retaliation in first.

Let us look at a hypothetical example of how freedom might be wasted. Suppose a country existed, for argument sake we will call it The Land of Milk and Honey and this land was ruled over by a benevolent benefactor who was paternalistic towards his own people but who regarded the outside world with some suspicion. In fact this ruler put the well being of his people before that of his own family (now you know I am making it up).

In order to make the lives of his people as free as he possibly could he gave them the following things. Every citizen received a free house, even before the benefactors own parents received one, so the citizenry was free from mortgages and obligations to the financial institutions. Of course nobody was forced into the standard fare and if they wanted to build a mansion at their own expense then they were free to do so. To go with the new free house they were also given free electricity. Throughout the land, there was no difference in status between men and women. As a result of the universal free education, literacy rates had increased above the 90% level. Free education means no student loans. The idea of incurring personal debt for the countries greater benefit was a concept abhorrent to the benefactor. Along with free education there was also free health care. Health care in the land was pretty comprehensive but as an exercise in PR, the leader said that if anyone needed any health care or a procedure that was not available in that country the patient would be taken free of charge to any other land where it was available. If any citizen wanted a loan they could have one from the benefactor free of interest. Agriculture was considered one of the most important professions to the benefit of the community so anyone with serious intent in starting a farm was given land free of charge together with seed for the first year.

Then there were the nice to have things, the icing on the cake: a yearly present of $500 to every citizen; a wedding gift of $50,000 to every couple that got married; the benefactor paid for half the price of a new car and gas throughout the land was 14 cents a gallon.

What silliness! Such a land of Milk and Honey can only exist in children's fairy tales. Yet it was real, it did exist. How many of you guessed that the land I have described was Libya and the paternal benefactor was Colonel Gadaffi. Not everybody's first choice of a leader I will admit but those people didn't live in Libya. When Colonel Gadaffi faced the news cameras and said “Nothing will happen to me because my people love me” he actually believed this to be true.

Now that is all gone, the people in their greater wisdom have decided to swap all of this for the pleasure of having a national bank. Such is the power of persuasion and taking a step backwards whilst the flow goes past.

Those interested in knowing what is behind the Arab Spring can check out the post I wrote here in January 2011 entitled Non Violent Resistance. We know what Libya has given up, you can remind yourselves what Tunisia gave up.

“Human life... mistreats freedom only... wasting it, as if it was junk. People don't like freedom, they are afraid of it. The strange thing is there is nothing to fear about freedom...”. Well it sure looks like the police captain had the right of it after all.

Freedom is a zero sum game in the world of us and them. The more we have the less the PTB have; The more they have the less we have. In order to maintain this disparity the PTB need control and the means of control is Social Order.

Concepts in social order have changed over time. Writing for the American Journal of Sociology in March 1944, Lawrence K Frank had this to say.

“Social order has long been conceived as an organization or mechanism which exists as a part of the cosmos and operates through large-scale forces acting at a distance. Social theory has taught man that he must learn to submit to these assumed forces and accept this cosmic organization as necessary to social order, while social research has attempted to measure these assumed forces. Recent studies of culture and personality indicate that social order is not given but historically developed ideas, beliefs, and patterns of conduct and of feeling which each culture has evolved as the guides to human conduct and the management of group activities.”

Whilst it is certainly true that the type of social order within many cultures is different from each other, the statement that “Social order is not given” has, in recent times, been shown to be false. Since the advent of the internet, the source of social order has been identified and is no longer believed to be an invisible force like gravity acting somewhere out in space. It is now believed to be manipulated by a clique of top international bankers and their programmes acted out through governments, particularly those of the United States and the European Union. It would seem that in recent times, social order is inversely proportional to economic stability. In other words, as the world economy goes to hell, there is a greater social crackdown on the citizenry. Whilst we are unaware that any US citizens have yet been 'rendered', the obvious question is how would we know since checks and balances are now things from a different age?

So far as I am aware there have been no physical conflicts by the US authorities against a large body of its own population apart from the police maintaining the status quo against demonstrators in Seattle, Miami and earlier in Watts. The military were used similarly in Little Rock according to the Force Act when the Alabama authorities refused to let the police intervene. The present effort seems to be a psychological war to undermine the moral confidence of the citizenry. Although there are too many examples to list here, I give a few to demonstrate what I mean.

Do you remember a year or two back a small You Tube clip that went viral of a great bear of a traffic cop tazing a 70 or 80 year old lady over some minor traffic offence. Was this released by a well meaning colleague or was it a set piece intended to build a picture in the mind of the general public? We are in control and you don't matter. This was followed a short time later by a video clip taken with a cell phone camera of students first being tazed and then shot by police in the public areas of a university.

Over in England, the ex government scientist Dean Warwick died on stage whilst in the middle of giving a lecture. Amongst the subjects he had planned to talk about was WTC 1 & 2 and his experience of bringing down different tall buildings, in Russia if memory serves, using only infra-sound waves. Also what really happened with the Lockerbie plane and why a small number of survivors were allowed to die on the hillside of hypothermia. He also said he was going to name the Antichrist. It was commonly believed that he was taken out with some sort of beam weapon which resonates the brain's delta waves. These are the subconscious ones which keep the body's heart and other organs functioning so the body's organs just stop working. A man holding a device which resembled a camera was seen laughing as he left the building after the death. A couple of months later it was reported that one of the minor Rockefeller's was taken out in a parked car in a similar way.

There has been much commentary on this blog and others that drones exist and could be used to break up demonstrations, insurrections and other forms of civil disobedience. If the type of beam weapons mentioned above could be incorporated into such drones then this would give the authorities an awesome advantage.

There have been many reports, on You Tube particularly, of hundreds of detention camps throughout America which according to popular belief, are intended for American citizens whenever the time comes. This is reinforced by images of fenced off fields stacked high with what are reported to be three person open coffins.

Is this all fantasy? The thing that gives it some credibility are the reports that came out of Iraq a little time ago that US troops stationed there were asked if they would be willing to stand militarily against US citizens on US soil. What a strange question, why was it asked at all if there was no intent behind it? And why did President Bush rescind the Posse Comitatus Act which now allows the military to do such things?

Let us remind ourselves where we came in, with the police captain's speech from Satantango.

"Captain: Not that human life was so highly valued. Keeping order appears to be the business of the authorities, but in fact it's the business of all. Order. Freedom, however, has nothing human. It's something divine, something... our lives are too short for us to know properly. If you're looking for a link, think of Pericles, order and freedom are linked by passion. We have to believe in both, we suffer from both. Both from order and freedom. But human life is meaningful, rich, beautiful and filthy. It links everything. It mistreats freedom only... wasting it, as if it was junk. People don't like freedom, they are afraid of it. The strange thing is there is nothing to fear about freedom... order, on the other hand, can often be frightening."

For me this is case proved.

Next time we will have a look to see if it is possible to rescue self order from the authorities. We will examine the part of the police captain's speech which says “Keeping order appears to be the business of the authorities, but in fact it's the business of all” and we will see if such a self ordered Anarchistic type, fairly well developed society has ever existed in the past.

THE RELIGION OF CONVENIENCE

More on this picture below.

from Murph
I am going to propose a different perspective on our society today that I have not come across before. It has been an idea in the back of my mind for a lot of years now. It is the concept of the progress of western civilization and probably most of the world toward personal convenience.

It appears to me that most people are very happy to have much more convenience, which is in reality, less physical expenditure for a given goal. I realize that I indulge in this myself. There are several ramifications to this. Less physical and/or mental output for any desired goal means one more step toward physical atrophy and in many cases, mental atrophy.

Let’s examine the mental atrophy first.

When I was doing my practice teaching at the university, I noticed that the classrooms were filled with students happily punching in 2 + 2 into hand held calculators to get an answer, literally. Frankly, I was appalled. When I had my chance, I asked the classroom how many people thought that every time they punched in a request for an answer to an arithmetic problem that what the calculator told them in the readout was to always be assumed to be correct. Every one of them affirmed that it was always correct. At the time I was fresh out of classes engaged in all kinds of math problems and it was so long ago that I don’t remember the examples I used to show them that it wasn’t always true. I do remember asking them to give me an absolute number for pi. Of course this is not possible. For most hand held calculators, you get only 8 or so numbers that represent pi. I got some varied responses to this.

But, one of the results of students at the grade school level using calculators was that very simple arithmetic problems, (like multiplication) were seemingly beyond their abilities, same with simple addition, subtraction and division. I am forced to call this a form of mental atrophy.

Further, I found this to be true in other areas. Discernment, critical thinking, and logic were lacking, even at the university level of study. The convenience of calculators, computers and experts’ pronouncements on anything were accepted at face value rather than expend the mental energy to determine a truth for oneself. This mental atrophy can show up in some of the most obtuse areas. When we moved here to north central Oregon the “experts” told us that raising our own food was impossible, don’t bother to even try. Well, we found out that wasn’t a true statement, but most of the residents accepted it at face value. We and a very few others had to demonstrate that it was not a true statement and call attention to that fact. In the last couple of years, there has been a flurry of gardens and greenhouses in the area and the raising of small livestock for food.

I am sure that all of us can point to physical atrophy through convenient tools and gizmos that reduce our physical expenditures of energy. Otherwise there would be no reason to have workout gyms or home workout gadgets. Interesting, that sports do not fall into the concept of convenience but most of our daily lives do. It’s as if we are encouraged to make up for the convenience of daily life functions by being very extreme in our inconvenience of non-productive physical exertions. We are constantly being admonished to get off the convenient sofa and walk, run, go to the gym, whatever. And of course, there is the age thing to deal with; as we age, the ability to engage in non-convenience diminishes. I find interesting the proliferation of extreme sports activities that in actuality are quite dangerous. It’s as if the extreme convenience of modern life for most of us has to be compensated for by risking life and limb on dangerous sports.

In my younger days I participated very little in dangerous sports. Not that I wasn’t fascinated by them and wanted to, it just seemed that I never had the time or the money to participate. I was too wrapped up in expending energy on just living. Things like making money cutting, splitting, hauling and stacking firewood for the folks that would never be bothered with doing that. Or the making of things by hand for sale.

One of the themes running through the Archdruid posts is that convenience entails complexity, and that appears to be true to me. He further asserts that complexity also entails fragility, which also appears true to me. Complex technology has increased rather dramatically, in the last 200 years, the convenience of daily living. It would take very little to completely interrupt this technology and convenience. If a person has no idea how to make things, or how to maintain simple technology, and the complex technology is interrupted from whatever source, how would that person have a chance to survive? Examples; what percentage of our adult population knows how to either produce their own food or to even prepare it if they had it? Prepared boxed food that is tossed into the microwave or heated in a pan on the complex technology in the modern kitchen is the norm. I lived for a while in a city where almost without exception; the people I knew didn’t even have food in the refrigerator since they ate out at every meal.

IMO, we have carried the technology of convenience to such an extent that any interruption of this technology means a distinct lack of survival for most. It has also promoted the mental attitude of dependence and disdain for those that chose to not live that way. I’m a lazy old cuss, I want to find the easiest way to solve problems, and I have to admit that if I had the money to compensate, I probably would indulge in complex technology more than I do. You know, the bigger, better, more powerful machinery to accomplish a given task or to hire it done. I have to ask though; are we actually better off for it?

Let’s take a look at just one example of what is lost from a hi tech society with lots of convenience.

Only a few generations ago, we were predominantly an agrarian society wherein most families produced their own food. The extended family normally lived fairly close by. In the fall when the harvest came in, everyone got together and helped in the harvest and also got to share in the harvest. Also, fall was when the butchering of animals took place to supply winter meat, the steer, the hog, the rabbits the goose, etc. Everyone from toddlers to the oldsters took part. This is a far cry from going to the grocery store (the convenience) to doing it yourself. Without even touching on the quality of food difference, it did make the extended family all have skin in the game. In this only one example, convenience has an impact on social structure. I am sure all of you could come up with other examples that illustrate how convenience has affected social structure.

This also applies to the broader society, not just those in an extended family. The Amish are a good example of this cooperation between the whole community in projects that benefit everyone in the community and that group certainly cannot be accused of living with a whole bunch of technology to make their lives more convenient.

The top photo of a log building that encloses our wellhead is a personal example. We had loaned some money to a couple that were just flat out desperate. They reciprocated by helping us build that building. Now we could have bought sized lumber that probably would have been a lot easier to build, or even bought a pre-made small building and just had someone drop it on a rough foundation, a lot more convenient. But I had the small logs on hand taken off the property several years ago and a pretty good pile of reject lumber and roofing. I figure we have forged a much more lasting relationship doing it the less convenient hard way. Now believe me, I understand that our modern day life of long work hours to make the money to buy the convenience gizmos is the standard today. I spent a lot of years on that treadmill.

For the most part, it sure appears to me that the convenient life style has encouraged divisions between the populace rather than closeness and cooperation. I also think it has made our society a lot less resilient. Cripes sake, I live in a community of several thousands of people but yet there is only maybe a couple of dozen or so that I see face to face to exchange ideas and thoughts and to help each other out when there is a need. Depending on what value system you hold close to your heart, you can answer the question; are we better off?

Ramping Up

(photo credit to wikimedia)

by murph

It sure appears to me that the worldwide and US situation is escalating in the protest department. It may get dampened a bit during the winter, but I do think it will pick up again come spring, barring some catastrophic event. The PTB are ramping up their suppression and their counter attacks are becoming more severe. If the protests do not degrade into negotiated talks, which the protestors will seriously lose, I do expect protests to increase and probably escalate into some form of violence, which of course the PTB will forcibly answer. If that indeed comes to pass, the character of the American public will be laid bare by their response.

I have run across some younger folks that when I talk about the doom and gloom crowd on the internet talking about how bad things will develop, I am hit with the idea that these folks are selling fear through their advertising. I wanted to point out that there was a big difference between scaring people for economic gain and warning them that bad events were coming and to get ready, with or without economic gain. There are some kinds of mindsets that simply are not worth the time to argue with. Of course when I come across the Pollyanna folks I figure they may feel the same way. Being a doomer is hard work and very seldom much in rewards. J These kinds of conversations remind me of a Robert Heinlein statement that optimists have more fun in life but the pessimists are more often right.

There has been a lot of discussion all over the internet, including this blog, that goes back and forth over the idea about violence to affect change. I would like to examine a bit the assumptions on both sides of the argument.

Those that advocate or predict violent responses to perceived injustice, of course, assume that they can win confrontations, particularly if they have enough people involved. In today’s world, with the modern technology involved in suppression of a populations uprising, (like Libya) this is a tenuous assumption. If the western powers had not intervened, the uprising in the Eastern countries and Africa probably would not have been successful. And, in those cases, the goals of the uprisings are highly suspect as to agendas and alliances. Another problem with the violent uprisings is the agreement that if they are successful, what is to take the place of the current way things are done. I look at the outcomes of the French, the Russian, the Chinese revolutions, and what forces took over in the aftermath and it sure doesn’t appear to be any better than what was fought against. The assumption that something better will be the result is not born out historically except in very few isolated examples.

On the other side of the discussion that proposes non-violence, their assumptions have some very real problems too. The first assumption revolves around that if sufficient pressure is brought to bear by non-violent protest, the situation will change, that those in power will see the legitimacy of the demands and change their policies. This contains another assumption that those in power will voluntarily give up some or all of their power. Historically, I don’t see this as a reasonable expectation (see Tibet’s non violent attempts at freedom from Chinese rule). Or, our own attempt at separation from English rule by peaceful protest and demonstrations, the protests by the Indians against the atrocities by the US government and their brutal suppression, or the protests after WWI by the veterans, or the peaceful protests of bailing out of the bankers not so long ago that were just flat out ignored.

I do realize that any movement to change the status quo by whatever means will result in attempts at more suppression and a lot of blood in the streets, at least in a figurative sense. I do not see the PTB voluntarily giving up power, ever. It has to be taken from them and they always seem to escalate the suppression dramatically every time that is attempted.

I do realize that if enough folks (in the 70% or above) all got on the same bandwagon, change would happen. In this country, that would mean around 200 million insisting on an agreed upon agenda. What is the chance of that happening today? I do not see a general consensus agreement on what needs to be changed nor what is to take its place. Yes, lots of discussion on this, and small groups of people do agree on a few things, but by no means a consensus of the population. If and when that consensus does happen, then watch out! Something will change. The scary thing for me is what groups agenda would prevail. If the Christian right had its way, we all would be living under Old Testament law as they interpret it. Frankly, blaming Katrina on homosexuals as god’s punishment as an agenda for social organization is scary to me.

Now maybe I purposely seek out writers that support my own view of what is happening. I do periodically seek out the other side of stuff, but am always disappointed. Rhetoric, outright false information and political ideology seem to be the only mainstay they have. None of which impresses me in the least.

The comments from the last posting were intense and plentiful. I must have spent 4 hours on them and the links within the links and the added stuff that looked interesting on the sites.

My inbox email is being overrun with political ads and propaganda, from all sides. Maybe I’m just prejudiced on the subject but the ones from the conservatives leave me thinking what a bunch of asses. Not that the liberal side is any better. After all, both sides of the political spectrum are bought and paid for by the same groups. I am left with the question of how any thinking person can vote for any of them. Maybe all this ideology talk should be settled by a duel at 20 paces. Oh, I forgot for a minute there, the Repugs would win hands down. What liberal would think of violence and guns to settle anything? But at least it would provide more profits for the popcorn distributors.

Other than a vast majority of citizens agreeing on an agenda and willing to take part in it, I do not see a successful non-violent change in the status quo. Our own revolution against the British had less than 40% of the population support, at least in the beginning. Same with our civil war and WWI. It takes time and propaganda to fire up a population to go to war or have a popular uprising.

I truly wish I could come up with a solution so that violence was not the outcome to affect the changes we need if we want to preserve any sense of freedom at all in our society. Freedom to be consumers and wage slaves is not freedom in my book. But to achieve anything else, control has to be wrested away from the corporations and the sociopaths that are currently in power and there must be a consensus about what to replace it with. Otherwise, it will just be another cluster fuck laid on all of us.