Thursday, February 7, 2008

Don't Panic, but...

by freeacre

Once again, I risk being perceived as an hysterical freak. Whatever.

I perceive two major threats to “Wally World” right now. I really like the term “Wally World,” by the way, because it conjures up a sense of contrived corporate reality (like Disneyland) combined with the “wall” of Wall Street. Thanks goes to Montana Freeman for introducing this term during our blogsite converstations which neatly sums up the corporate house of cards that our country has become.

And, what would the residents of Wally World be called? We began as “citizens”, morphed more recently (during the Regan era) into “consumers.” Now, I guess, we could be considered “ticket holders.” We bought the ticket. Now we take the ride.

We won’t be considered “consumers” once there is not much left to consume. The blowback from the ill-conceived complicity with Israel, the central banksters and the Wall Street Crime Family may just empty the retail and grocery shelves very soon. We may receive the answer to our long standing question, “Will the crash be a slow one or a fast one?” Will it be due to climate change, resource depletion, or over-population (slow), or some acute thing such as global nuclear war, meteor hit, plague, or some other natural cataclysm (fast).

I don’t have a Magic 8 Ball that gives me the answers. But, two recent events have me imagining the fast crash right now. The first is the disturbing information that can be read on many sites including cryptogon, rense, Urban Survival, survival acres, steve quale, prison planet, or LATOC (to name a few), about the cutting of underwater communications cables off the coasts of several Middle Eastern countries. Some sites report 5 cables cut, others report 9. Whatever. It’s big. Real Big. And the timing is significant, in that it is during some Islamic holiday that honors the anniversary of the creation of Iran or something between Feb. 1 and the 11th, wherein Iran was supposed to begin an oil bourse which would begin trading oil for non-US denominated currencies. We all know what happened to Iraq after Saddam tried to do the same thing.

Additionally, other indicators of war related hardware seem to be gearing up all over the place. There are our air craft carriers and ships in the Persian Gulf. There are reports of Israel advising their citizenry to get their “rocket rooms” stocked up in anticipation of large scale attacks on the country, tied to them vowing to intensify their Gaza operations and beefed up threats against Syria and Iran.

We also note that Iran seems to have space vehicle launching capabilities that they demonstrated by their Safir-1 test. Hammas has expanded their missile targeting area to cover larger parts of Israel. Iran has also started testing advanced centrifuges which could speed their nuclear program. All this is neatly summed up on today’s Urban Survival with links to sites that verify the information.

On the more esoteric side, the web bots (Half-past Human.com) are noting the linguistic patterns (which so accurately called the recent “wind events”) calling for “shortages” and “revolution” and “war” with multi-generational implications. The scenario, it seems, is maybe an attack by Israel (and/or the U.S.) against one of their Middle Eastern neighbors which is not well-received by the rest of the world, and triggers a response that we will not enjoy. Like, maybe an OIL EMBARGO against us.

Entertain for a moment thoughts of what an oil embargo would do to our economy. Keep in mind that we are already trillions of dollars over-extended and dependent on foreign capital to even stay afloat in the financial ocean of digital liquidity. We are not just dependent on foreign oil. We are dependent on foreign money as well. So, the threat from the outside is that both the money that props up our banks as well as our stock market and the oil that keeps our whole infra-structure going could be discontinued simultaneously. Hold that thought as I propose another one.

Mortgage holders are currently walking away from their homes in record numbers. “Jingle Mail” is what the mainstream media is calling it. People are putting the keys to their homes in the mailbox and just walking away from their bloated loans on the McHomes that are now worth less than the mortgages they are on the hook for. The adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) that they dim-wittingly signed up for are still re-setting, thereby making the payments unaffordable. With little equity to lose, there is not much incentive to go out and take on a third job for the foreseeable future to pay off a home worth half as much as you owe on it.

All this is going on while things are tight, but relatively stable. Think of what the impact would be if there is a war and an oil embargo against us, and people begin to lose their jobs in droves. Could our bovine brethren, that herd relied upon by the corporate class to keep them enjoying their golden parachutes and corporate dividends, be unwittingly turned to trample their owners?

As their jobs, their credit cards, and their gas tanks dry up, the plaintive “moos” will be crying into the wind. Not exactly a determined, angry, collective scream as in “Braveheart,” but an effective attack on the ruling class nonetheless. This from Kevin at cryptogon:

“Voluntary Simplicity in terms of asymmetric warfare.

In America (and wealthier parts of the “West” in general), people don’t have to blow up a natural gas pipeline and shut down a factory or cut enough fiber to crash the NYSE and the NASDAQ market systems for a few minutes, hours or days. Voluntary simplicity, or, living well on very little money, kicks evil people in the nuts and gouges out their eyes. (Pacifists may think of this as sending the enemy Joy and Happiness if they desire.) Doing this in the U.S. has a force multiplier effect because the U.S. is the largest source of the funds that keep the global ponzi scheme running. When people in wealthy countries opt out, the action causes major economic damage to the machine.

It’s a matter of hacking The Matrix in an efficient and innovative manner to reduce your monthly expenses to a fraction of previous levels. The extraction/domination system in the U.S. has few effective defenses against people who opt out—to the extent possible—by making smart use of available resources. The system assumes that you’ll stay hooked forever on a lifestyle built around profligate waste and going deep into debt to buy crap that you don’t really want, or need. Indeed, most people are content to go through life this way.

If a regular insurgency movement reduced the banks and their data centers to piles of smoking rubble and assassinated the executives and members of the boards of directors, that situation would represent a walk in the park compared to what “consumers” are about to do by abandoning their McMansions and stucco boxes.

Obviously, this isn’t a conscious insurgency movement, with Joe and Jane Zombie Slob plotting to stick it to “the man.”

Maybe it’s a subconscious insurgency movement, where all those years of thinking, “F*$% this,” and “Actually, my life sucks,” and, “This can’t continue,” are boiling over into simple actions that hurt the machine, and bad. It’s a very dangerous situation for Them when the herd realizes that it can, “just walk away.”

(Gulp)

We may actually be backing into the Big Change that people are babbling about. God knows we had no chance of doing it consciously. HA!

I just ordered new glasses, figuring that I better get them now because they might not be available later. And, maybe we need some more switch grass for feed, if we increase the numbers of chickens and add rabbits to the mix around here. I’ll leave you to making your own plans and this latest thought from George Ure at Urban Survival:

“If we get the kind of outcome that seems to be fuzzily developing in the Middle East, the US could get some serious blow-back from pending events and that means we might need to think about what an oil embargo would mean. Linguistically 'encounters with scarcity' due soon would be kick-started by such an outcome of a 'sudden war'. So would the pogrom and calls for 'revolution' meme.”

64 comments:

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Freeacre, this one is in the class of ‘good but dour’.

Btw, the correct expression is "Don't Panic second".

As to how to refer to the people of Wally World, the mongrel French speaking lot from southern Belgium who are neither properly French nor properly Belgian are called Walloons. I think this is pretty apt and should fit the bill.

The point about the economic damage caused by people posting their own house keys through the letter box and walking away is well taken. See the article I referenced towards the end of the last post for a full explanation.

Yes a total oil embargo would be almost as fast acting as a nuke. I think Texas T only accounts for about 20% of needs and guess who would need that the most – not you I can tell you. The ‘nucular power’ and bit of hydro and wind farm energy would not amount to much in the greater domestic scheme of things. Time to seal the hatches I think.

Oldensoul,

Practice is a hell of a lot better than theory. Your friends can absorb the day to day happenings from the ether whilst they get on with useful work.

Anonymous said...

Sad news: one of our chickens died today. She seemed to be feeling poorly, so we brought her into the house to warm her up. Put some Vaseline on her wattles, petted her a bunch, tried to give her water and corn, etc. Then we made a chicken hospital out of a box and some straw and put her under the kitchen table to rest. But, she died about an hour later. Poor little Supreme.

Anonymous said...

Please consider getting a shortwave radio in case of internet cut. www.etoncorp.com. They have an older radio model 2005 released E1XL Recommended retail price $500, $290-$350 range new on ebay, $228 used approximately on ebay. It is the radio with some form of built in anti jamming circuit so it can survive in worst case where every other radio failed. There is newer model from eton called grundig satellit 750, $300 RRP, 4.2KG weight, which is same as tecsun S2000 model chinese factory. But only selling starting March 2008 for grundig 750 and even tecsun s2000 which start selling april 2007 I cannot find any on ebay or shops in hong kong despite search for many months. If you cannot afford expensive radio www.etoncorp.com has some emergency shortrange radio at $50 range.

Palooka's Revenge said...

was that spam or singapore?

“just walk away.”

this language is all over the bot reports lately as part of the rev meme. and as exactly what people will be forced to do.

rp.... you asked. 'preciate that. the biggie that moved through the mid section was well north of us. we've had some daz of heavy winds (for us) and, fortunately, some seasonal rains. but we are already down for the year and it ain't helpin the big lakes much... lanier up 1 foot in 3 weeks. add to that ga got their ass kicked in appeals court the other day. state and corps cooked up a sweetheart deal. lower states challenged and the court threw it out. more water goes downstream. i wonder who was suckin who on that one!! 75 wed. 70 yesterday. i'm workin on a rain harvest stg system among other things.

have sis in iowa city getting constantly hammered with snow. 150 miles northwest where 2nd sis lives its like summer. very strange weather pats.

Palooka's Revenge said...

fa... sorry bout the chickie

Palooka's Revenge said...

everybody pretty quiet in the wake of this one. or maybe everybody gone to the supply store!

the stated objective in the very begining was to cripple us financially. this intention is clearly stated in those early post tower tapes. listen carefully and you know bin knew exactly what he was doing. this is what has me convinced he was involved in the beginning. all this shoot em up stuff (including the towers if your willing to make a connection between the grunts and gurus) is just so much fireworks designed to get the military occupied and blow up a ton of money. then occupation of the holy lands would fire jihad in the bellies of the foot soldiers.

Mission accomplished as bubba would say! 'cept bubba swallowed the bait hook line and carrot!!

there was no love between bin and saddam right? they despised each other. so binnie got a two-fer eh?

there's a whole lot more to it than a trumped up pissin contest between binnie and georgie boy by now. which was exactly what binnie had in mind. he read georgie boy like a book. and georgie? they say both his books burned in that library fire.

i seriously doubt the israelis are happy campers. they just might be over him by now. that latest "no we can't guarantee we can take out every site" just mighta been the last straw coupled with everything going on across the sands and the new eye in the sky.

Anonymous said...

Good morning, I hope.

First, this morsel from Will Thomas on the cut cables:

"Sheer speculation, of course.

But five cable breaks in the same region in less than two weeks is a bit too “coincidental” for comfort. And the timing of such significant Middle East Internet disruptions could also be sending another signal through those severed cables.

At the very least, spending $1 billion and five years’ shipyard downtime to retrofit a Seawolf-class attack sub with advanced tech capable of splicing into underwater fiber optic cables shows the seriousness of US intentions to mess with crucial cable communications.

Put this technology, timing and events together and “Cable Gate” seems a
more likely explanation than interference from submerged space aliens worried about the IOB’s impact on currency exchange rates on Aldeberan.

Take your pick.

And watch for the bourse to surface."

Full story here, in rants and whispers;
http://www.willthomasonline.net/

Palooka, sorry to hear about your on-going drought. We got a touch of that last summer, when water rationing by the town began in June. It made watering the garden quite a challenge. I know that's nothing like you folks have been experiencing. (Is Lanier really 90 feet below full pool?) We've also been getting hit with a series of Pacific storms. Bothersome cold, a little snow, and lots of wind.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed how much radiant heat there appears to be in the sun, on a clear, quiet day? Man, the heat on your face, for this time of year, seems an ominous sign. Feels like it's gonna be a hot one this summer.

Freeacre, I am so sorry to hear about your chicken. Any more gettin sick? I guess you know what I'm thinking.

Anonymous said...

I get a laugh. Last night, a contractor friend came over with blueprints to have me look at a project and give him a bid. It's a retrofit. Not a lot of money available, but "they" want three fireplaces and stone around the foundation.

As he was leaving, I said to the guy, better buy gold and silver, the economy's tanking.

"You've been saying that for five years. Ain't gonna happen. I figure things will be bad for a couple years, then it'll turn around."

This from a guy who, until I informed him last night, had not heard one word about undersea cables having been cut.

Try as I might, I can never seem to prepare myself for the shock of witnessing, first hand, the ignorance of those fully engaged in running the show.

Now this, from the Progressive;

"Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.
InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm."

http://www.progressive.org/
mag_rothschild0308

mrs p said...

freeacre, yesterday while listening to the car radio, (PBS) I just happened to turn it on and SHOCK...they were talking about the undersea cut cables. You might be able to get the twisted interview off the net. The jist of what I heard was that the guy being interviewed was completly downplaying the "conspiracy theories". They talked about cables in two different areas, one the Mediterrainian Sea, the other the Gulf of where ever and they mentioned ship "anchors" as the culprit and the corrosive sea atmosphere. My gut impression was that this "report" was contrived and very intentionally meant to quell. Except for the "Bill Moyers Journal" show on PBS TV each Friday night, most of what PBS has to say is controlled by the Right Wing CEO (forgot his name). <--I was suprised to find this out in the recent past. Tonight Bill Moyers will read off the suggestions people gave for what book they'd take to the Whitehouse. He's definately an old Southern Boy but he bucks the system constantly on the air which is refreshing for PBS. The Bill Moyers Journal comes on at 9 p.m. PST here in CA, not to be confused with Bill Maher political comedian, who has a show on HBO at 8 p.m. PST. Which at times is also poignant depending on who his guests are.

An oil embargo would certainly jump start the long emergency to the fast track. And what a perfect reason to declare a national emergency where they'll shoot to kill and won't be asking any questions later. We're going to be riding some huge waves and in spite of my knowing what's coming I still feel like I'm in a dream (nightmare) and can't move any faster. We're in slow motion, they're in high gear but highly incompetent. The universe can't support these thugs much longer.
<--wishful thinking on my part.

The kind tenderness you gave Supreme chicken was heart wrenching. I could be wrong but I think animals deal with pain way differently than we do. At least you gave her love and peace as she floated away into her astral body. Now she's a spiritual hawk protecting your domain. Check the coop water source? Could it have been old age? Obviously I'm not chicken savvey. Love your post. You make me think & do more.
xo, msrp

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

The temp here is about 52F which is about 15 – 20F more than it should be. The sun was shining today and the crocuses are starting to come out. As with rp, it felt very warm out of the direct wind but then the chem. trails which had been mad busy since before I woke up, until dusk made the whole afternoon more temperate. The VTM five day forecast gives night temps at about 28 – 32F and daytime temps 50 – 54F and sunny.

Sorry to hear about the Supreme. Maybe there will be someone called Diana in chicken heaven and they can all sing and have bad hair days together.

Anonymous said...

Rockpicker,

The reply the contractor gave you "You've been saying that for five years. Ain't gonna happen. I figure things will be bad for a couple years, then it'll turn around."

Seemingly he does not like 5 year projections on anything. Wonder what projections he makes about his business.

Of course we are gonna get these kinds of reactions. Imagine the reactions I got, I have been talking about this happening since 1976. The people that completely discount these warnings have a point, but fail to realize that it could be true, and if it is, non preporation is a recipe for disaster on a group and individual level.

We have discussed before how difficult it is for people like us trying to pass on the warning. Where do you start, and we know the level of information these people have, negligible.

Of course we could be wrong too. We might be every bit as taken up in propaganda and misinformation as we think they are. But, I figure that being wrong for 30 years, it's about time I hit it right. lol

Anonymous said...

"Walloons" sounds good, Belgium, for the Wally World residents.
Thanks for all the kind words regarding our chicken. It wasn't old age, for sure, since she was a chick last spring. Don't think there's any bird flu here yet...could have been the cold, or who knows what?
Thanks for the reminder to watch Bill Moyers. We like the NOW show, too. Even Zakaria can be good.
That FBI program to create some sort of business class informant ring, combined with the one they also have with pastors of churches is outrageous. "Shoot to kill" OK's?? WTF?? How can that even be legal? If the citizens need a militia, then have a militia - not a corporate secret police goon squad who could turn people in for any assortment of reasons, like they are the "wrong" religion or they happen to be a business competitor. Next, it will be demanding sexual favors or financial incentives "or I could make things real difficult for you." This would just bring out the worst in everyone. Sick and wrong.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

When was the last time you saw your father?

Anonymous said...

rp... no. deepest part is only 160' at full summer pool. we're 20 feet below that. 33 feet below flood. down .4 since i looked yesterday. if you saw this lake you'd know that 20 feet is alot of water.

140' sounds like alota water left but that depth is concentrated in a very samll area. a gazillion fingers due to topo. many now dry.39,000 acres at summer pool with 692 miles of shoreline. thats 73 sq miles of surface fed by a watershed of 1040 sq miles. thats a 14/1 ratio. VERY small but deceiving due to ups and downs of topo. the official website still lists the record low at 1052.7. that was in 81. the dam is 192' above river bed and nearly 1/2 mile long. it is earthen.

i haven't anything to point you to without doing a little digging first but your face does not deceive you. more uv's etc coming through according to those who measure such things... p

Anonymous said...

Rockpicker,

Continuing on our previous comments. I wonder if you or anyone else knows someone that is knowledgeable about current events and follows the alternative news that isn't in our corner? It appears to me that if someone takes the time to look at the stuff, they always come up with similar conclusions.

Anonymous said...

freeacre,
very sorry to hear about your bird companion, a few days ago i was driving down the street and sitting in the snow along side the road was a blue jay, i stopped opened the door and it just sit there looking at me,i looked at it and asked it if it wanted to go with me and i got the impression that it did so i stepped out of the truck and gently reached down to it and it did not move a feather so i picked it up and placed it in the truck, took it home and placed it in a box, well the newly arrived niece came over and i asked her if she wanted to take it over to my brothers house and nurse it (she is staying with him ) and she said yes.
my brother whom you all know has cancer and will greet the ancestors soon i expect was a little askance at the prospect and i wandered about this,.. all his life he has been called jayebird, jaye for short,his name is james.
he came to care for the bird which was incredible beautiful but only a few days later it hopped out of the box came over to his bed,laid down and died.
i have wandered about these seemingly synchronicity events which are taking place at a shorter and shorter time in between them.
is anyone else experiencing them and is the duration becoming shorter? hummm.
the incredible sense or importance of losing something dear to one and the agonizing grief we experience in the aftermath of these episodes,and they are episodes as the book says (a part of a larger sequence ) and the sequence....is there an ending to the sequence of life? at three in the morning i think of these things, if these attachments belong to the human race on at least some level is it any wander that the so called education we receive at the hands of the evil one brings us the sweet joy we seek? (thats a joke).
anyway,
was thinking and discussing with my friend of and lady of the healing arts yesterday on the trip to the sacred watering spring we drive thirty miles to to get drinking water and got to talking about attachments, habits,addictions,etc.,she says they are different, bug says they are all the same but wear different costumes, i think they lie somewhere in the gray zone of ambiguity because if there was such a thing as exactness there might be and end to human misunderstanding or as p says, misunderstanding ones self, at least i think that is what he says, ...hummm see what i mean?

this started off a few minutes ago as a result of the fact that i had my old Dell wiped and reinstalled with windows xp and then started wandering how i could get it to communicate with the new mac that one of my sons gave me, and it dawned on me that in order to do that they had to have a minimal amount of similarities to achieve this wonder, and they obviously do,i was pondering, and at this point reckoned it to the human condition also,...certain conditions have to be met to come to a final point where each person has to experience the exact same thing that the other person is experiencing and at that point where is the other? by the gods there is no other, there is only what is!! eureka!! bug rolls her eyes and sends the why do i put up with this and looks like she needs to go the the bathroom and upchuck.
i don't care i think i'm on to something even if my antenna waving sidekick thinks different,she says that the only way that humans will ever see god or the great spirit or
wanka tanka is to choose the path of the mystery walker, the one with no legs.fuck it lala land seems just around the corner at this point and she laughs at my attempt to grasp such a concept, its a mind trick she says, to produce an alternative to the immediate judgement of a mind encase in concrete.
she says you do not know how to say goodbye and this leads to all the pain and misery you humans just have to hold on to, attachments are your undoing,the free flowing of a natural universe is beyond your grasp for it is not a thing that can be grasped as a new plastic thing from what you call wally world.
the beginning and ending of all things are contained within the moment,and as the moment is ever changing this sweetness is the everlasting gift of the great spirit, that point which a beautiful friend of mind called the needle point on a spiritual journey she related to me one time is that place where the juncture of a timeless state of being brings forth the manifest into the unmanifest.

i look into the depths of the coffee cup and wander just where the acid came from, a friend of mine just called and in a frenzy began relating to me the dream she just had about a baby we had and how it was eating every thing on the world,..... i give up w'samftd?

having loaded everything into the arc its now time to unload it i guess, the what to leave in what to leave out is gone and in its place is a beautiful sunlit morning in a place called snowville, a place of wonder and mirrors all around to look at,to marvel at and to understand finally the reality gift we are blessed with, to say goodbye with the smile and knowledge that there is really no such thing as goodbye. but only hello.
we love you, we love you,we love you.
aho
mf&fellow walkers

Anonymous said...

I wish you were here this morning, Montana. I would make you and Murph pancakes and bacon and anarchist eggs. Then we could laugh over the news that the money that the government is sending to us in the form of a "rebate" this year is actually an advance on our projected 2008 rebate that we would have gotten next year. What a pimp job. It would be easier to swallow if we had some damn pancakes to go with it.
So I am no financial wizard, but it looks like the banksters are going to try to re-coup their losses this year by us spending our money on paying on our credit cards, and next year when things are even tighter than they are this year, we will be be left out in the cold. Corp/gov scumbags.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Bacon with pancakes??
Never tried that one.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Bacon with pancakes??
Never tried that one.

Anonymous said...

What?? Ya fry up some bacon. Then you break two eggs into the hot bacon grease. The bottom of the eggs will get all crispy & lacey. Baste the tops with the hot grease until the tops turn white, but the yellow is still soft. Eat the bacon and eggs next to a stack of pancakes with syrup. There's your classic big, fat, American breakfast. If you are from the South, you could forget the pancakes and add grits instead.

RAS said...

Hey everyone. Thanks have been a nightmare around here the past few days. Not only have I been busy, but those storms really screwed everything up. There wasn't any storm damage here, but one of the twisters hit about 30 miles from here. I may have grown up in Tornado Alley, but that was a little too close for comfort. One of the men killed was a National Guardsmen who had just gotten back from Iraq. That's some rotten apples -survive bullets, bombs, and DU, only to be taken out by a damn twister.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

So Big Mac’s are totally gross but IHOP is traditional fare. Hmm, I shall ponder that.

Ras, seems like you need a hearty breakfast to set you to rights.
Glad you are ok.

Anonymous said...

I have to say it again. Here is the world over there, coming to an end. And Life as we have always known it changing before our eyes. Then you have over on this side a clump of loons who can't seem to take it all very seriously leaping and cavorting like it's holiday on ice.

How refreshing to see. I keep telling my wife that it's all a cosmic joke but she never believes me. If she only met you people she would understand. Carry on.

Anonymous said...

socialskills,

awww, I don't get it. What's that to do with what is being discussed

Buzzard,

As I understand it, not a unique situation. Lots of men seem to understand and the wives don't. I imagine it has a lot to do with introducing uncertainty in her life.

Anonymous said...

Oh, boy. This is gonna be fun.

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Murph,
I believe ‘Social Skills” input comes from the title of the post and possibly about my throw away line of ‘Don’t panic second’. Anyway it has more relevance than what constitutes a good American breakfast. I hope Social Skills sticks around and isn’t put off by Murph’s brusque comment. However, I will double, redouble Murph’s final observation.

Anonymous said...

Boom, boom, boom, boom...

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

Jeezus, Everyone, I have just received a personal e-mail from Freeacre giving personal info about her family history in response to my 8 Feb 2.35 comment ‘When Did You Last See Your Father’?
Firstly I would Never, Never make such a crass demand for personal information in such a way in a public forum. If this has been misunderstood by Freeacre, then it looks like it has gone over everybody else’s heads too.
To retrack a little, we were talking about the possibility of the FBI using business forums to gain personal information on targeted people and also of FIMA duping pastors to guide American citizens like lambs to the slaughter into detention centres.
“When Did You Last See Your Father” (Alternatively referred to as The Blue Boy) is the title of a painting which hangs in the Walker Art Gallery in my home town of Liverpool, UK. I was under the mistaken impression that it is so famous, everybody would know of it.

The Painting can be seen here:

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/lastseefather/

Click on ‘The Story’ link underneath for an explanation of why it was relevant to the flow of the conversation.

Apologies Freeacre.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Belgium, I was wondering about that query. My da died Feb. 5, 1975, at the age of 55. I was holding his hand.

I only see him, now, on rare occasions. Usually, late at night. Or, perhaps, fleetingly, in that damned mirror...

Anonymous said...

Belgium;

Wasn't familiar with the painting. Pretty amazing what emotional buttons a 'triggering' scene can push.

Anonymous said...

lol...oh, OK. Nice painting, Belgium. No, I'd never heard of it. It is a poignant representation of families (and communities) torn apart by judicial inquiries. Good one (now that I know what the hell you were referring too...). Sorry to have dismayed you, SATS.

And, regarding "Lots of men seem to understand and the wives don't. " That can, of course, work both ways. That said, I think people will be resolving the bad news of resource depletion, climate change, dollar collapse, population overshoot combination of factors much like the process identified by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Much like coming to acceptance of death, there are different stages of resolution along the way: denial, fear, bargaining, grief, anger, etc. And people spend differing amounts of time at different stages.
One of these days, I hope to get my mind and heart around it enough to come to acceptance. At that point, I will be able to be compassionate in the face of suffering, and still at peace knowing that the situation is appropriate and inevitable, given the long view that life does have to radically change if it is to continue at all.
Hopefully, I will be able to be productive and still able to access feelings of joy and appreciate beauty and feel love for those around me. With me it's the challenge of balancing my sense of the future with my experience of the "now."

stoney13 said...

The whole oil thing could go the other way too! Remember back in the late eighties?

What if OPEC boosts production through the roof, and starts selling oil for a dollar less than what it costs to pump it from the ground???!!!

It worked once really, really well! Made good 'ol "Ronnie Ray-Gun" change whatever nefarious plans he had, and damn quick!

Right now oil company profits are propping up the economy! Make thsat oil worthless, and you bring the whole pile down without firing a shot!

Anonymous said...

Stoney,

The question of course is can the oil producing nations indeed increase production enough to upset the economy. Most, but not all, that I have read indicates no, they can't, that they are running at max now. But who the hell knows outside of a small circle of people.

It sure appears to me that the economic situation that our country initiated and pursued at the beginning is self destructive and needs no help from the oil producers.

In time, if we live long enough, maybe we will find out. I want to stick around for a while and see what in hell happens next.

Anonymous said...

Belgium,

Interesting painting. Hadn't seen it before that I remember. I thought you were referring to Rembrandt's Blue Boy painting.

To all, I didn't intend or want to project a sexist angle to my comments. If it was taken that way, my apologies. I have come across many families where one adult saw a very pessimistic outcome and the other flat out denied it. Indeed it does go both ways.

Palooka's Revenge said...

i suspect social skills has some clue as to the fate that lie before us. thus he/she saw the comment completly in context of the current post. the cognitive disonance lingo has been big in the bot reports recently and apparently continues to grow. this is, in part, why i said in a recent comment that it might be wise to read up on it.

cognitive dissonance is only one form that can manifest in the masses when faced with the unfathomable realities of secrets revealed. those realities are mostly denied realities, imo. from one layer of the cake, there are no secrets. the truth lay bare before us if we can find the courage to explore it.

something loosly resembling anxiety attacks and even actual heart attack may well be the case for others as these deeper denials move to manifest into form. i've written from time to time that what is going on with universe now can be described or labeled as an untangling of energies. i empahsize... I HAVE NO PROOF OF THIS. this is my opinion. and as a major part of this the deepest denials will be manifesting into more and more recognizable forms. universe is playing a role in holding our pants to the fire. there is no time left to learn what could have been learned already and intervention is required.

i've witnessed this dynamic of cognitive disonance in play when triggered by panic inducing events. you have too. its just that you may have not connected the dots yet. some folks may rise to an occassion and be capable of functional help for themselves as well as others. others become frozen and can't tie their own shoes. still others might really "loose it" in the face of what's going down before them and appear to us as if they've gone mad in the moment. you've likely witnessed just such things to one degree or another. these are mostly reactionary responses... as if almost autonomic. reason can go out the door in a dam hurry. this is why i know you can never know how someone, even with training including simulated events, will react until faced with the real thing... the heat of the moment. rescue trainers who know their shit know this and the manuals speak to this. and even experienced rescue people can and have lost it midst an op. there are reasons. but thats a comment unto itself.

severe anxiety attack is something i've had to deal with along my way. that the physical and emotional symptoms of AA's are strinkingly similar to actual HA's leads me to suspect there is a connection in the underlying energy dynamics as they manifest in body though even the med community apparently does not cotton to this idea and sees no connection. one thing is fact, though rare, it is not uncommon for someone to die of heart attack in the midst of an unfolding event that triggers panic. a recent one in the news that comes to mind right now was the subway explosion in new york perceived as a terrorist attack by many who were in it. there was one casualty. cause of death, heart attack. there are many other reactions as well. stampede is often one that manifests. with all the research done and advances we've made into understanding the human survival psychi, there are still some things left to mystery. or very little is known about the underlying dynamics except that panic is often the key motivator to chaos. herd mentality is one of them

recognizing AA's for what they are and learning how to move through my own AA's without them taking one's self down became something i had to deal with. one doesn't wish them on. at least not consciously. they happen and you're left to deal with it. its not uncommon for HA's to not show up on EKG's. this was the first thing they told me when i ended up in the ER. a friend of mine had one recently. this was the case. he had all kinds of symptoms. when they picked him up they hit him with oxygen, nitro, and an EKG. nothing showed up. then it did and thats when they turned on the red lights. only to disappear again and look normal. but, since it did, it was a pretty good marker that this was indeed an HA and not an AA or some other thing. certain elements of the physical symptoms would come and go with the EKG but others would be manifesting even though the EKG was ok. blood readings, enzyme levels, and so on are part of the pix to determine if someone is actually having or has had an HA.

could an HA start out as an AA in some cases? now there's an interesting question. throwing an EKG on someone does not solve the mystery. nor any of the other verification methods. i seriously doubt anyone has the answer to that including the med community.

based on that and my own experiences and, IMO, though there are good coping tips for dealing with AA's offered at social skill's link... ie, breath work... some of the other stuff, at a deeper layer of the cake, is exactly what led to them in the first place. at a core level.

that is said, not to put down things like positive affirmation. that has its place and i've used it myself. still do. and not just for AA's. but it can, and often is, a denial modus operandi as well. denial of the underlying energies that need to clear. in an AA (triggered by some event though it may well not be recognized there was a triggering event), those energies have broken loose and are moving to cross the line in the body and are moving to seek acceptance, clearance, and resolution. if too much breaks loose at one time, we're in trouble. this is what i think happens in HA's. but on a deeper layer of the cake. obviously there are many physical things that are taken as causal. like blocked arteries. but what is causal to them? genetic pre-disposition, poor eating habits, smoking, on and on. but what is causal to those? thats where we have to be looking.

we talk about, and generally agree, that it looks and feels more and more like the wheels are coming off. learning how to deal with our own emotional and mental reactions to events (not to mention others) is likely our most effective survival skill if the wheels come off. if they do, people are much more apt to come unglued. and in a hurry. if that one grain of sand falls that shifts the whole pile into panic mode en masse, all bets are off.

en masse is relative. likely to unfold in reactionary bits and peices as events unfold. thus we won't witness a planetary massive heart attack. or panic, aka anxiety, attack. but we'll likely see massive reflections of cognitive disonance and, to a lesser extent, fatal panic attacks on the part of some of the populace. there are just too many things in play to put it into a one size fits all category.

ultimately, denial is imo, at best, a short term solution to a long held problem that is seeking resolution. another way of saying that is all disease is a symptom of imbalance. most dox, even the staunchest of traditional western medicine, agree with this. short term could mean this lifetime. but sooner or later, in human form at least, the sustainable solution needs to be found in the body politic in real time. i suspect this is part of why we keep coming back.

mrs p said...

Yes it does. The stuff I used to fret about, at one time, was forbidden to be spoken or heard by my hubby and now he suprises me with some of his comments. Have I influenced him?, maybe a little...he sees things from a different angle than I do for sure but he hasn't read Crossing the Rubicon. Maybe the whole mess is becoming more and more obvious. It's funny once you're on to them, (the PTB), everything they do and say seems contrived and put up,...almost as if they're trying too hard to fool us.

Anonymous said...

Palooka,

I agree that tension, in any form, can cause heart attacks, or at the least arrhythmia. I realize that there is a whole litany of symptoms that accompany tension and panic. Cognitive dissonance seems to be a condition of very large groups of people confined into small spaces. Resolving the dissonance is hard work. Most discard whatever is causing the dissonance rather than resolving the issue. And that is not to say it can't happen in sparsely populated living either. It appears to me that the greatest mistake humans made was to build cities and squeeze too many people into too small a space. Never did like em myself.

I've commented before that as/when the wheels come off, mental preparation is just as important as physical preparations.

The commenter about anxiety attacks I had no quarrel with, it just seemed that what was being said in the post and the comments wasn't about that information and I asked about it. I guess I have a problem with empathy on this one since I don't recall every having what I would call an anxiety attack. Or, maybe I just didn't recognize it as such.

Palooka's Revenge said...

murph... maybe cd is a condition that arises from trying to define cd. didn't we go here before? or maybe i'm dreamin. wouldn't be the 1st comment i wrote i didn't post.

anyway, do you believe you can tie your shoes? high probability of a yes if one is typically capable on a regular basis. then something happens and suddenly not being able to do what is inconsistent with the norm.

as an example, i've seen this happen on the river. my point is this is a very real psychic dynamic that can be triggered by events. a drowning in this case. experienced in the psychi as a shocker to the system to the point of rendering individuals unable to perform simple, normal functions much less contribute to the mission at hand. like tieing a simple knot in a rope. the body wasn't even there any more. there were 5 of us on this one. all seasoned paddlers and some with extensive safety and rescue training. boat pinned in a heinious undercut. body flushed and retrieved prior to our arrival. pre-planning and on-site assesment from riverside. as soon as we got in the river and into action it happened. 3 of the 5 lost it. couldn't function. we had to get them out of the river for our own safety and theirs. to me this is a form of cognitive disonance as applied by the psychology dept down at the local u.

Anonymous said...

social skills,
welcome to this little patch of weeds we call home,even though we all have a slightly different calling or path to walk we still love to hear from anyone that cares to muddy their feet by coming here.conformity is a bastard child and uniformity is fornication with a unicorn in a maze where if understanding comes it comes as a cloud of sweet smelling smoke, and speaking of smoke guys, this one gets his medical marijuana license next tuesday!!lets here if for the great state of montana where even the sheep inbreed, we are blessed.
w'samftd, first they put me in prison for growing god's own good smokin's and now they say help yerself ole son, you got a ache? go head and scratch it!!
fuck me, what's not to love about this lunatic aslyum we call home.? yeah i know, a bunch.sigh...

p, read you loud and clear,we only send up different colored smoke and it makes for a fairly good high i think. purple haze anyone?
a little orange sunshine might go down good right now, maybe not, its a little outside the natural order of things thats for sure.

buzzard, love your handle, there are some really big ones that live here in montana,saw about half a dozen the other day lunching at the remains of a deer that's life purpose was to become a bumper sticker for a car from washington state. the people that come from there like to come over to montana and drive real fast in a place where there are a hell of a lot more deer then there are cars or people or anything else for that matter, at least i think so.
one was so hungry that when i stopped my truck to get a look he just sat there atop what was left of the critter and gave me the attitude that said,.. just try to take this lunch from me, i snapped a picture of his? bloody beak,ears,face and neck and got the hell out. weird though, you hardly ever see the suckers unless something has died,

freeacre,
it would be a dream come true to sit and have flap jacks with you and the nater, you could teach me how to make bread and he could show me how to reload ammo.
i also was raised on pancakes,bacon and anti christ eggs, however the syrup on the eggs really never turned me on especially if the eggs were sunny side up.ugggggggg!!! eggs on this side of the plate syrup on the other side so they don't get mixed up, i must of had some sensitivity in those younger days, hummmm. wander where it went?
i'll bet some of the eatins that sats was raised on was just as gruesome to us, amazing what we get used to and call normal,

ras, good to hear you had no part of mother nature's display of ego shrinkers. would love to have a conversation with you sometime as you are in the mind understanding game for serious, i go to your blog site but can't seem to make it work, will be so glad when i get out of the fucking first grade and actually converse with the big people.
my stone mason friend here in the village sits back blows a big smoke ring snaps his suspenders and says in that montana drawl " yep, when yur numbers up yur numbers up " and thats about all there is to that. which makes me think that what if you only had, say.... ten words to talk and communicate with which ones would they be? hummm.
i'd go for you,me and we, and seven others to direct those three. what do you think?

mrs p,
good to hear from you,its the same thing every where and we all speak of it , people just don't want to be disturbed from which ever attachment is in place at the time, if you think of it thats some scary shit to me, if you look real close you can see the little wind up keys sticking out of their backs, now just who is doing the winding? ok you got me,its a self winder they say but where did the key come from, who or what made it and what would happen if it was suddenly jerked out?!! would we just flop over and stop moving?
what ever happened to push one button and the whole story gets told,? its just to complicated for me , but guess what i finally learned to send pictures with emails, i learn about one new thing per year it seems,,sigh.....
eating a lot of cod liver oil,ginseng and ginko trying to jump start what's left of a perfectly ordinary semi-intact brain after so many years of alcohol abuse, man if anyone out there is still drinking that stuff at 6 am i would seriously start thinking of doing some research about the long term effects of that shit. coming back is a bitch for sure, will have one year under my belt come next month, sober is such a strange place,sure makes it easy to see why people want to escape all the cruelty we face each and every single day of our dysfunctional fucked up christianized lives, control is death with a capital D, and thats a FACT, period.!!! plain old psychological control. and its all based on the stupid assed reason that we are controlled either through the fear of punishment or the fear of not being loved,! man thats only two things~!!what is the problem, i need a joint on that one. sorry mrs p, you are too kind a person to be in the same room with some one as fucked up as this one. sometimes i get to thinking about it and just go bananas for a minute or two.

p,
i am amazed at the fact that that some of the actual words and phrases you use are exactly the same as some of the ones i have used in emails to various friends, i think that that is a semi-rare occurrence that two people walk a red path and live so far away from each other, i mean these paths within hand holding distance must take place as a result of having experienced some of the same events in an order that makes such a thing possible, what other reason is there?
its hard to imagine how it would be if the whole world was aware of the same thing at the same time, would that be an energy rush or what? its pretty obvious that we are all composed of the same magic dirt, and off the subject its been suggested that thought is physical, that it is energy in a physical form located in the human brain and can be proven because if you go into the brain with a good buck knife you can cut out the portion that contains these parts that include the memory, so its just cells that get written on, just like a computer chip i think.
so what happens when the parts are cut out and flushed down the toilet that contain the instructions that make us aware of our identity as ego ? we no longer exist do we? is it that simple? we are nothing more then scraps of code written on a piece of protoplasm ?someone help me here with this ,ok? but thats what it seems like what it is, a surgeons knife and then we are gone? now wheres your fucking jesus i ask ya, seems like jesus is just a piece of code laying in the toilet right next to what use to be us.
ok that seems a little far out but what if its right?
bug says that there is really no such thing as a we, and that we do not have the capacity to understand what that means, but in bug fare its like this , the concept ,we translated into something is this, we are light energy composed of actually nothing, and zip around the universe playing with the things that spirit has given us to play with, these things are energy based and the intermingling constitute play. but somewhere along the line something went haywire,and that is part of the great mystery that the tribes of many nations speak of in the scheme of human endeavor, the understanding of who and what we are must be understood she says, otherwise there is no reason for this experiment to continue and thats pretty obvious from this angle. i mean i see no solution as to the possibilities that humans will come to love, and that is the only game in town that has any meaning whatsoever, i mean what trumps that, a new car? if i get nuked its ok just as long as i am in my shiny new car!! w'samftd? , thats the question.
is this really to much to ask for , ? have we so little caring that death is a button you push on the computer and thats it ? that human suffering is just an illusion, that as long as we have ours fuck every one else?
man i just don't get it,
ok i got to go to eagles nest and get my head straight before it explodes.
sorry this is so long of a boring nature
peace brothers and sisters,
i love you
mf

RAS said...

hey mf, you can link to my site directly here: http://myflightfromthegrid.blogspot.com/
I had the most beautiful golden brown hawk parallel my car for about 2 blocks Sunday. It flew over me, circled back, and then flew alongside for those couple of blocks. It was incredibly neat.

p, I think you're confusing cognitive dissonance and anxiety attacks. They seem similar but are really two different things. Freezing on the river like that would be an anxiety or panic attack whereas CD is the conflict or anxiety that results from lying to yourself or contradicting one's own beliefs. An example would be a pacifist designing weapons for a major arms manufacturer. That situation would cause said pacifist to experience a lot of CD. This is because humans by nature try to seek consistency between all their cognitions and their actions. Here's a site that explains it much better than I can: http://tip.psychology.org/festinge.html

RAS said...

let's see 10 words? Hmm, I'd pick the most diverse polysyllabic words I could find, then when it was done I'd dissect them into syllables and build more words. Since all words are built out of syllables (and there are only like 70) you could recreate an enitre language from a small number of words.
Yeah, I know that's a cop-out, but hey, one thing street kids like me are good at is bending the rules. ;-)

Palooka's Revenge said...

what other reason is there?

...to borrow a metaphore from KK... you been readin my mail!

so what happens when the parts are cut out and flushed down the toilet

...you get a smart ass for toilet instead of a smart ass sittin on one? whats the bug say?

we are light energy composed of actually nothing,

...i buy the first part bigtime but me and the bug have to have a little chat about the last part. nothing? c'mon you crazy bug, this is too serious to be fucking with me head! i luv ya, but i beg to differ. now you're gonna tell me thats what makes the world go round. checkmate.

but somewhere along the line something went haywire

...now THAT we have no argument with! but i ask you... ever play with magnets?

i mean i see no solution

...i do. its woven in the mortar. we've just missed it.

i mean what trumps that,

...now here we can agree on the concept of nothingness. but you already knew that. even nothingness has to fit into the puzzle someplace eh? sure sounds to me like a good place for nothing's right place.

that human suffering is just an illusion,

...from my view, suffering is pain. something nobody wants to have to bear so we try to talk our way out of it. thats exactly the argument for illusion. only prob is, its real!! its one half of the recipe, capable of lifting out of it, telling the other half of the recipe left stuck with it that they're crazy. combine parts. add acceptance of each for the other. mix thoughly. let free to be. voila... you have the future in present time and the riddle to the above enigma. ever play with magnets?

w'samftd?

...ya got me on that one.

Anonymous said...

Well, I got my emotional buttons pushed today... last week a telemarketer called to ask if I wanted to renew my subscription to Vegetarian Times. I was not planning to because, although I do like the magazine, I figured that I have enough of a collection of them that I can look up recipes in the old issues because there are a lot that I have not tried. Anyway, she reminded me that 12% of the money goes to the Dornbergher Children's Hospital in Portland - so I got talked into it. Anyway, today I am making out the check for $19.95, when I notice that I had just made out a check in October for a renewal to Vegetarian Times. So I called them up:
The woman at the other end of the line sounds like she is middle-aged, from New Jersey, has a tight perm, and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. Anyway, she tells me that I have 3 accounts - one I signed up for in June of 2006 (30 months), another I signed up for in October (20 months), and the new one just this week for another 20 months. WHAT?? At nine issues per year, that's SEVEN YEARS OF VEGETARIAN TIMES!!
"Lady, I'm a certified Oregon SURVIVALIST, for Christsake! Do you think I'm going to knowingly sign up for seven years of magazines when I believe that the economy is on the brink of COLLAPSE?? Are you CRAZY??? I'm not certain that the country will even EXIST by then, so you just cancel that last account for me, please."
God! You gotta watch these honkies.

Anonymous said...

Here, honey, this'll calm you down...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
ryMliyeIDp4

Anonymous said...

And Palooka, here's a little something for you to chew on.

http://www.thunderbolts.info/
thunderblogs/mgmirkin.htm

Palooka's Revenge said...

thx rp. i read the esa article and was like, so (as gmirkin points out) where's the betrayal? i read the damn thing twice and i'm still perplexed! then i have a flashback to a meter stick and thank the stars for folks like the thunderbolt gang.

universe drops its secrets right in their laps and the deny-ers have to spin it around with their twisted, ill-conceived notions.

i've had such a hard time with physics it just blows me fuses!! pun intended!! ever since hs physics class taught by sister raymond from the end of meter stick telling me gravity is the predominant force in the universe. and i'm sitting there in the front seat within easy striking distance looking at the wall and thinking to myself... i know damn well the electricity in the wires in that wall going down ain't flowin any faster than the electricity in the wires going up. but the presence of the threat of that damn meter stick, which she applied with liberal force, kept such inqusitive thoughts to meself. and here i sit, nearly 50 years later, dumber than a rock and feeling like a round peg in a square hole!

damn, these are our cosmology experts? i want em off the damn planet, i scream. send em to their right place wherever that is if you're out there pops!! then it strikes me... these are astrophysicists and cosmologists. and i shudder at the thought!!

Palooka's Revenge said...

rp... (and all) here's one back atcha... http://www.chycho.com/?q=Politics_for_2008

a really tight friend just sent me this. only had time to do a 5 minute run thru but knee jerk sez post here asap... p

Anonymous said...

Palooka,

Remember some time back that I said that all science at its most basic is a belief system? It shows up in the concept that; what we think is true now in our known physical experience has always been true and applies to the whole universe. (there is a term for this concept that I can't recall at this time). Obviously this is an assumptive concept that may or may not be true since we cannot verify either part of the assumption; for space or time. I first came across this concept in archeology and then realized it applies to all science. The only place I could see no evidence of it was in mathematics. In that field, the assumptions are clearly laid out and everything else follows in logical sequence. It makes no statement for all time and all space; that is, universality. It is a closed system.

This is not true for all other areas that we call science. To make valid statements in the rest of science, since it is an open system, certain universal assumptions must be first accepted on faith. Any effort to make a closed system out of it is always going to contain errors. Thus giving rise to theory and laws that are faith based.

The elements of the scientific method are contained in one major methodology; repeatability and verification. This methodology has its own drawbacks, namely that it draws conclusion about what is called anomalies and rejects them as invalid. This methodology is exemplified in statistical evaluation, and for that reason is seriously flawed in examining any physical event.

You have pointed out that the physical investigation of our universe has drawn many questionable conclusions. The stratification and fossilization of the scientific arena has been and I suppose always will be due to the wiring of the human brain, and where you get the funding for investigation of anything and whose interests are advanced or threatened. Investigative scientists prove what they are paid to prove. That is how you get funding. The renegades are alive and well and time will show the approximation of truth they find in the end.

Anonymous said...

Palooka,

Thanks for the link. That page will take a while to read. I've bookmarked it for daily check-ins.

Anybody hear ANYTHING about the cut cables or the bourse?

I think the lamestream media must be having another Sibel Edmonds moment.

I'm wondering how long it will be before our cowering officials
barricade themselves into
their own inner-beltway green zone?
while legions of pitchfork-wielding Paulites hem them in under a chemtrail haze, trading Starbucks and big Macs for concessions.

Ooh, I'm beginning to have a daisy-cutter moment, myself.
Better go eat something...

Anonymous said...

Did the North American tectonic plate just shift sideways slightly?

Djew feel it?

Palooka's Revenge said...

maybe you're feelin the baja about to
break off and set sail for parts unknown. just started into its 6th day of wagin back and forth and up and down. hundreds of shakers. i count nearly 150 and i'm just lookin at 2.5's and up.

Anonymous said...

LEAD STORY
China's historical fascination with crickets has recently been exhibited in cricket beauty contests, singing competitions and prize fights, according to a January Los Angeles Times dispatch, and has led even to increasing vigilance about crickets cheating with performance-enhancing drugs. The fighters duel in terrarium-sized containers, and, according to the Times, "Overhead cameras (project) the action onto large screens," allowing spectators close-ups of crickets tossing each other around with their powerful jaws. The best fighters may sell for the equivalent of $10,000, are raised on vegetables and calcium supplements, and are sexually active before fights. The doping issue mostly involves the "singers"; slowing the vibration of the cricket's wings produces an attractively lower pitch. [Los Angeles Times, 1-13-08]

read this to bug,she was unimpressed,
females,..sigh.....

Anonymous said...

From Belgium,

It does seem to me that the information about the cut cables was flowing along the cables that were cut. By the time they are fixed they won’t be news anymore so it will just wither away. It does seem strange to me though. Why spend six years and so many billions to refit a sub just to do this and why now and why in those particular locations? Common sense tells us that if such an action was prepd, then there should be some follow up action whilst the system is down which we have not yet seen. The only other explanations that I can see are if we make an analogy to a human stroke. Is the patient permanently crippled and if not how does the system rewire itself? Could it be an exercise, as we sometimes say in Liverpool, in marking OPEC’s card? Or could it be like the nukes argument, they have spent so much time and money building the thing it is a shame not to use it.

Re whether science can provide all the answers, the answer is probably not. Standard Theory is very clunky but is defended to the hilt by myopic scientists. As yet there is no Theory of Everything. Mark McCutcheon made a brave attempt at a completely fresh approach, debunking many cannons of the scientific method. For instance, he found that Newton discovered an analogy between the force acting within a piece of string when a stone is attached to one end and it is whirled around your head, and the way objects react with each other in space. Newton apparently got his eraser out and did away with the string and called the resultant attractive force ‘Gravity’. The equation fits observed practice but Newton didn’t discover any new force. Then we have the age old nugget of whether the electron is a particle or a wave. Some observed effects favour one theory whilst other effects are better described by the other theory. A mathematical physicist whose name I can no longer remember calculated that if we assume light travelled faster at the time of the Big Bang and is in a continual process of slowing down as with all other things in the universe, then a lot of scientific anomalies just melt away. There is another rivet blown out of the ships hull. However what this means is that at some future time the universe will stop and human life will not be indefinite. Scientists tend not to think much of conclusions like this so we hold into the belief that it always was and always will be constant and that makes us feel better.

As said, mathematics seems to be self consistent and although we were born with ten fingers and ten toes to count on, our beloved dalliance with the number ten is completely arbitrary. Try metricating time; ten day weeks; ten hour days, one hundred minute hours, it doesn’t fly. Then if we had ten tone octaves instead of twelve, all our pop music would sound completely weird. And I would not like to think what the astrologers would make of a ten sign zodiac. Different number base mathematics is possible but there is a consistency throughout it. Pi would still be pi in base seven say but the number would no longer be 3.142. There are also complex numbers which I never understood but are reported to be consistent.

Finally, I think that Langosta has it right. Betting on fighting bugs just isn’t cricket.

Anonymous said...

Belgium,

The lamestream media in this country have raised irrelevancy to a new art form.

We're getting nothing on the cables, or the bourse. Nothing about Sibel's latest revelations.
(http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5685)
Damned little about Israel's heightened state of alert, or Syria's delayed reaction to yesterday's assasination. Then there's the ongoing Russian military manuevers and recent surfacing of US naval plans to manipulate the weather and use it as a weapon. (How 'bout them chemtrails,eh?) Here's a must see video. http://novakeo.com/?p=454
No one, including Democracy NOW's Amy Goodman, will touch THAT story.

NPR and BBC are a joke.

Man, there's so much real, nasty shit happening right now, it would take an army of dedicated journalists actually doing their jobs to keep up. Few will even try.

Not surprising, the pentagon has declared war on the internet.

I take the cut cables to be a shot across Iran's bow, as well as a warning to the resistance movements in the west. When the time comes, they'll cut our cables too.

Sun's shining. I'm shivering, and sweating. Better take myself out for a walk. Gotta check the sky...

Hey, everybody, look up. I'm purchasing Clifford Carnicom's "Chemtrail Aerosol Crimes". Two copies for $8. One copy goes to the library. List of distributors on >carnicom.com< Tell everybody you know. Those aren't 'natural' contrails. We are being poisoned!

Palooka's Revenge said...

I take the cut cables to be a shot across Iran's bow, as well as a warning to the resistance movements

i couldn't agree more!

some say no mystery. they argue its to fuck with the bourse. the bourse ain't news. this is at least the third time it was scheduled to come on line.

others say no, there's more to it. cut the cables and install snooping links in the fix op. so what was the boogie man waiting for? and the snooping tactic ain't news either. been there, done that...

http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1386&category=Environment

if they were going to do it again why be so transparent about it by wacking 4 in 3 days drawing global eyes to what would surely be a highly classified, clandestine op? i'd argue that, if we've done it before, its already been done again.

still others say... "Cause? With public communications cut off in Iran and other Middle East regions, a geopolitical speculation is that cutting major undersea fiber optic communication cables is deliberate sabotage before some unknown upcoming event in the Middle East or elsewhere.”

the implication is its part of the plan. or something happened that required drastic measures such to make the risk of exposure an unavoidable inconvenience.

poppycock!

they wanted everybody to know! they wanted all eyes on. the cables were used for what cables are used for... to send a message.

Palooka's Revenge said...

b... murph... wadda you 2 make of this thing-a-ma-jiggie known as the cosmological constant? fine tuned into something like 1 part in 10 to the 120 power. thats one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion from what i read. tweak that in the slightest you push the delect button and universe doesn't exist.

Anonymous said...

From rockpicker,

Problem is, what's the message?

Why bother to cut cables that can be easily repaired in a matter of days?

As you say, Palooka, the bourse has been delayed before. A few more days won't make any significant difference.

Once it's up and running, (and the Venezuelan oil spigot is shut off,)
how business gets done in the West will be very different.

I would guess these artificially low gas prices we're seeing will rocket upwards, triggering corresponding consumer price inflation while house values continue to plummet and credit
gets ever tighter.

People I read say the Fed will eventually drop the prime to 1 per cent, but it will only succeed in destroying the dollar.

How big is the Suez Canal?

Will Thomas writes about the USS Jimmy Carter having been fitted-out to perform these sorts of skullduggery. Either we've got more than one working on this, or we've got help. Otherwise, someone would have noticed a nuclear submarine floating past the Sinai, wouldn't they?

If the cuts represent an initial first-strike in an offensive against Iran, then I suggest the cables isolating Kish will be found to have been damaged beyond repair.

Anonymous said...

From rockpicker,

Don't know if this goes along with your question, Palooka, but I read a report yesterday concerning the Large Hadron Accelerator, CERN, in Switzerland, might, just might, be powerful enough to create a black hole when they switch it on later this year. The physicists admit they really don't know what will happen.
But, they do admit it's possible.

I say, go for it, boys. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Everybody, drink up, I'm headed to the bar for another pitcher.

Anonymous said...

Rockpicker, here,

Will Thomas, http://www.willthomasonline.net/
has just put up some new information on the cables. Sabotage is confirmed. I won't ruin the rest of it for you.

Anonymous said...

Palooka,

Was it formulated to make things fit or as a description? In such esoteric stuff, are we talking about reality or a construct? I guess my reaction is; so what?

Anonymous said...

From freeacre,
Wow! Sounds to me like Will Thomas has nailed it. This is going to get real interesting.

RAS said...

This is off-topic, but I had an interesting experience tonight. An old friend of mine is in town and he called me up and asked if I wanted to go out for a bit. Partly because he wanted to see me and partly because he wanted to get away from his grandmother for a bit (he's staying with her). So I said ok, and we grabbed a bite to eat at a fast food joint (only because I didn't have time to cook for both of us) and then went to a movie.

It's been awhile since I've been to a movie, and I nearly had a heartattack when I saw the prices. And they refused to give me the student discount too -which is significant, $2.00. They don't do that anymore on the weekends, they said.

Anyway, there was a cop stationed in the theater by the ticket booth. His job is too stay there all night in case of 'trouble'. Yep, that's a real good use of taxpayer funds. Then we get to the theater itself, which obviously hasn't been cleaned since the last showing. After an interminable wait through the commericals, they pause the screen before starting the previews and an employee comes in. She shouts at us all to get our attention, and then yells a lecture at us, along the lines of "There will be NO cell phone use in this theater; you will turn your cell phones off NOW. You will NOT put your feet up on the back of the chairs in front of you. Period."

No, that's not a joke. That really happened. (And that bit about the cellphones was in addition to the 6 reminders in the ads and previews.) After she left, my friend muttered under his breath "What's her problem?". I shrugged and put my bad foot up on the (empty) chair in front of me, where it remained for pretty much the whole movie.

That is the LAST time I go see a movie, with a friend or no.

Anonymous said...

Good grief, ras! What a horrid experience! It's bad enough to be charged so much money, but when you have to pay to watch commercials, then endure an authoritarian lecture on top of everything else, that's just plain nuts. I'd write to the management and demand my money back. At least they may give you a free ticket - if you even would darken their door again.
Then they wonder why attendance
is down. HA!

freeacre

Anonymous said...

[never been on time to a party in my life]

Freeacre, I agree that it is very much like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' different stages of resolution. I, myself, keep jumping back and forth between grief and anger.

mf, By the way I earned my handle so to speak. when I was still a young pup if you wanted to talk to me you had to be moving. Then as I began to rack up the years I transformed from Buz to buzzard. My wife reminds me that it is 'old' buzzard now.

Thirty beers a day didn't help my heart any. So, with congestive heart failure I'm more of a spectator. Had my last drink some five years ago. I don't miss it much. I make do with nature's bounty as some of us do.