The Sorry State of Today's Youth

It's getting colder...

Thank you, ras, for sending us a guest post! Always good to hear your thoughts.

By RAS

This post was going to go in an entirely different direction. I was going to do an in-depth report on the current state of food production, the (sorry) harvest, and projections for the coming year. I may still do that later. However, I got distracted by my recent experiences and decided to do this instead.

I have been working as a substitute teacher. It’s an interesting job, but amounts to little more than glorified babysitting, as I’m not allowed to actually teach anything. I have now subbed in the poor kids schools, where hall lights don’t work and paint is literally flaking off the ceiling, and in the rich kids schools, where a million dollars was spent on the stage alone. I worked at one assignment that was supposed to be high school English. The regular teacher lied so she would have an easier time getting a sub. It turned out she was an in-school detention teacher for the worst high school in the city. The classroom was me, an aide, and a 6’6” 250 lb black dude whose only job was to keep the kids from hurting each other or me. These were 9th graders -15 years old –and they were, for the most part, extremely dangerous. I’ve never had a worse work day in my life.

But it is not just those kids. Everywhere I have gone I have been struck by the sad condition of our youth. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good kids everywhere, but most of our kids suffer from one or both of two conditions: either their parents aren’t around at all and so they pretty much raise themselves, or their parents are around (some) but not enough and so they overindulge the children to make up for not being around enough. The end result is that the vast majority of our children have no manners, no discipline, and no real future.

Let’s step into the life of an average American child for one day and see what it’s like. We’re going to assume that the child is school-age (though the only difference in a lot of cases is that the child goes to daycare all day instead of school). We are also going to assume that the child has two parents, both of whom work full time at 9-5 jobs, make decent money, and really love and care for their kids. In other words, this kid has advantages many kids in this country don’t.

Our child gets up by 6:30 in the morning, because he has to catch the bus at 7. If he’s lucky, he gets a bowl of sweetened cereal at home. If not, he gets to wait until he gets to school and then gets a ‘breakfast stick’ or something similar. He is trapped in school all day, in a prison-in-waiting with 20 to 40 other kids and one teacher. Recess? What’s that? We’ve no time for recess! We have tests to teach to! Lunch is pizza, corn dogs, or hamburgers, generally speaking. All surplus from the USDA.

School lets out at 3, but mom and dad work until at least 5, so our child goes to ‘extended day care’ which is a fancy way of saying daycare. His parents get off at 5 and have to have him picked up by 6, which is when most daycares close. They have to drive there in rush-hour traffic, so it’s a quarter til or later when they pull in. The busy places in town are daycares at 5 minutes before 6 pm every night.

Now what? Well, now its time for dinner. First you have to drive home through rush-hour traffic. Mom and dad are tired; they’ve worked all day. If they’ve really got it together, one might have went home ahead to start dinner or they might have it in the crockpot. But not likely. They’ve got to feed the kids and feed them fast because by now its 6:30, so often it will be a drive-through or something from a box.

Now it’s homework time. The average child has between one and three hours worth of homework every night. This is not an exaggeration; I’ve helped first grader’s do this much homework. Some of it will have been done at daycare, but not all, so mom and dad spend an hour or more helping him with it.

Finally, everything’s done and its time for quality time with the kids, right? No, because its now 8:00 and our imaginary child has to get a bath and get in bed to be up at 6:30 again. This will repeat 5 days a week. Some nights he might have scouts or baseball after daycare. Weekends will be taken up with sports practice, more homework, and staying out of mom and dad’s way so they can take care of all the things they couldn’t do while they were working all week.

Do you see the problems with this? This child has no free time, no time to play or draw or explore. He doesn’t get to really hang out with his parents. His diet is crap. And yet –this is the condition of millions of children in this country. This child has so many advantages: his parents are home at night, they love him, they help him with his homework instead of vegging out in front of the tv, and on and on. And yet look at the state he’s in.

Consider this: 16% of kids are obese and another 15% are at risk of being obese. That number has tripled in the past few decades. Cases of asthma, diabetes, allergies, and autism have skyrocketed. The rate of childhood depression is increasing by 23% a year, and is it any wonder? So many of our kids are now on medication for these kinds of conditions it’s impossible to do an adequate survey.

It doesn’t get any better for the young adults. Over half of young people aged 16-24 are unemployed. The army recently said a third of them are not ‘fit to serve’. In a lot ways that’s a good thing –if you can’t serve, you can’t get blown up in Afghanistan –but in others its not. The army has historically recruited people who are in generally good health and not the brightest. What does it say about us as a society when a third of our young people are too fat to do a sit up and to stupid to know you need to throw a grenade after you pull the pin?

What kind of future do these kids have? Most of them don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving what is to come. If you’ve never turned off the game console, how are you supposed to figure out how to grow your own food?

I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t have any answers. But I fear for the future of our country.

The Times Call for Jedi Warriors

Freeacre


I know that things are bad. From Smirking Chimp, Brent Budowsky writes,
“Washington remains in denial about the skyrocketing misery index that plagues more than half the nation. Leaders in the capital do not get it.
The president and Congress should continue work to produce healthcare reform, but must understand that to most Americans, ignoring the economic crisis that threatens their daily lives while focusing obsessively on a healthcare bill that voters do not understand creates worry, outrage and political revolt.
Even after shocking jobless numbers, voters do not see any fierce "urgency of now" from Washington. To voters, Republicans are on Mars, Democrats on Venus, while they are suffering on Earth.
The president and congressional leaders should convene an emergency jobs summit to develop a major bipartisan plan to create jobs in America and call on business leaders to join with government.
In an upcoming column I will offer new proposals. For now my message is that Washington is dramatically out of touch with the economic pain, suffering, worry, fear, anger and concern of the people.
Consider the misery index that plagues more than half the nation in very dire and immediate ways:
1. The misery index begins with the real jobless rate of 17.5 percent. This includes the official unemployment rate of 10.2 percent plus those who are so depressed they have given up looking for work, plus those who cannot find full-time work and are forced to accept low-paying part-time jobs.
2. The misery index expands to the husbands, wives, sons and daughters of the 17.5 percent jobless in America and, for a growing number of families, the parents and grandparents who now live with them. Do the math. The "family misery index" is a giant swath of America suffering extreme, devastating and immediate hardship.
3. The misery index includes those who are employed and deeply worried about the future of their jobs. Today they are employed. Tomorrow they may not be, with the next major layoff announcement. They are deeply worried, and should be. Add them to the high end of the misery index.
4. The misery index includes wages that have been declining for almost 20 years, while the cost of living has been rising relentlessly. People work hard and play by the rules but year after year, for two decades, they fall further behind.
5. The misery index includes those holding most of the 700 million credit cards in America, who have had major increases in interest rates and fees, huge jumps in their minimum payments and major cuts in credit lines at their time of greatest need, even though they have always paid their bills.
6. The misery index includes those who are employed but are desperately making mortgage payments to avoid foreclosure. They could be forced from their homes to the streets; they frantically pay their bills and their mortgages, cutting back on food and medicine, even for their kids.
7. The misery index includes rising costs of healthcare and rising premiums for insurance that are punishing Americans. There is nothing in the healthcare bill that does anything for them anytime soon.”
And, then there is the H1N1 pandemic as well as the concerns regarding the vaccines for the flu, which may be worse than the disease. Now, it appears that a super flu or plague that leads to a hideous death by drowning in your own blood has hit the Ukraine. The lamestream is suppressing information about it, but there are several articles on rense.com and Steve Quail’s site, among others. Is it a disease or a bio-weapon? I don’t know, but it sure looks dangerous.

Peak Oil is suddenly hitting the news. A whistle blower from IEA admits that they have been suppressing statistics for years about the dwindling oil supplies in order not to create a panic. The movie, “Collapse” is opening in selected theaters today. It features an 80 minute interview with Mike Ruppert on the oil and financial crisis that will end the world as we know it. What is amazing is that the mainstream is calling it riveting and thoughtful, rather than denouncing it. Jeez, if the powers that be are suddenly going to admit that the world actually has a problem with oil production, I hardly know how to act …”duck and cover” comes to mind.

The government is handing over 11.5 trillion dollars of borrowed money to the mega-rich financiers, insurance pimps, and Big Pharma drug dealers at the expense of the rest of us. It is the most breathtaking siphoning off of wealth into the pockets of the richest 1% yet, and it’s being done by the Democrats! Of course, if it were planned by the Republicans, it would be even worse, if that is possible.

Returning veterans and people thrown out of work and into the streets are going nuts and killing people. Suicides in the military are at the highest levels since the statistics began. The mayhem may escalate as the conditions worsen.



We are truly on our own here. Maybe, at least today, that’s why I am actually feeling better. Lately, I have been feeling a sort of “preparation fatigue.” We have been preparing for this collapse for so long that I’ve about had it. I don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to think about it, don’t want to write about it. Stick a fork in me – I’m done with preparing. Systemic failure is not coming, it has arrived.

Now it’s about dealing with declining resources, the dysfunction of our institutions, and the collapse of the economy. Happily, today, I got a sort of “shot in the arm” (the good kind) by going to see the new movie, “Men Who Stare at Goats.” I’m not going to ruin the movie for you by telling the whole story. But, suffice it to say, that it portrayed the power of the hope and vision of the movement that inspired the hippies and changed many of us forever. It also presented the weaknesses and flaws that in retrospect were pretty funny.

I feel energized, liberated. Free from the illusion that the government will be any help, we can take it from here. And, we can re-discover and cultivate a sense of enthusiasm, joy, brother and sisterhood, love, fun, and creativity in the process. Why not:? We aren’t bureaucrats. We aren’t machines. We aren’t consumers. We are not that stupid herd that the overlords have tried to turn us into. We are human beings, with all the untapped powers and potential that real people have.

I want to catch the wave of energy that almost was forgotten. I want to be a Jedi. I want to use The Force to quell the Evil Empire. I want to sing and dance and give stuff away to my neighbors, learn how to feed and take care of each other. I don’t know how much time we have left. But, let’s bring the best of ourselves to it. Once again I tell you, we were born for this! The beautiful picture at the top is one that Montana Freeman took close to his home. I think it truly represents both the deterioration and the hope that is here for us.

GREIVANCE OR GRATITUDE

Grievance or Gratitude
freeacre

Monday, and I feel compelled to get a quick post up because we have well over sixty comments going on the previous post. All excellent, by the way. A much brainier post is in the works by Belgium. I stole the phrase “grievance or gratitude” from James Howard Kunstler’s latest Clusterfuck Nation essay this morning. He is referring to the upcoming Thanksgiving season, which seems to be buried in the malls by Halloween hoopla and the Christmas marketing blitz. He doesn’t think that folks are feeling particularly grateful this season, since unemployment is still on the upswing, many unemployment checks are expiring, the federal government is on the verge of bankruptcy, commercial real estate is about to go bust, and so forth. In fact, he intuits that when people get wind of the outlandish bonuses that will be paid on Wall St. around Christmas, a fair-sized segment of the population just might go postal. He even envisions a possible coup or some sort of disintegration of the federal government itself! That seems a tad over the top, even to me.

The consensus of opinion, at least from our little slice of consciousness at the Campfire, seems to be that President Obama is impotent to protect us from the banking and corporate globalists at best, and, at worst, a willing shill for the Reptilian puppet masters. I think of the sociopathic Big Boys pulling the strings as reptilian, due to their seeming inhumanity. They seem to be incredibly unconnected to the vast majority of regular people as to be another species dressed up in a suit. Cold-blooded, ruthless, greed-driven, malicious, and monstrous, they have proven capable of entrapping their victims whole, wrapping them up in a web of deceit, and eating them alive, like spiders. Okay, I know that spiders are arachnids, not reptiles, but they are not human, that’s for sure. The latest report this weekend on Huffington Post, and quoted by Kunstler (or was it George Ure?), that Goldman Sachs was going around the country buying up real estate mortgages that they knew full well were toxic, then bundling them up and selling them to foreign banks and pension funds. Meanwhile, they took out insurance against these derivatives so than when they failed, they would cash in. When the most prestigious financial institution is doing shit like this, with all the domestic and international ramifications, there seems to be no limit to how far they will sink. And, their perception of the people involved at the other end of these transactions are as dispassionate as the grey aliens are reported to be when observing a hapless abductee undergoing an anal probe. The banksters, the stockbrokers, and their minions in the legislatures are the aliens, and we are the herd suffering the mutilation. Sucked dry of our life’s blood and lying bloated in tent cities and underpasses, wild-eyed and crazed, or simply dazed and confused, the misery of the masses is about to get worse.

Why not? The Federal Reserve has already devalued the purchasing power of the dollar by 97 cents since 1913 and gotten away with it. The wealthiest five percent now own ninety percent of the wealth of the land, since Reagan and his chuckle headed “trickle down” theory of economics became the law of the land. The false flag event of 9/11 threw enough people into a panic that the constitution has been dismantled, and now virtually anyone can be labeled an “enemy combatant” and renditioned, tortured, and incarcerated forever without trial. The NSA just opened up a new center to help with the surveillance of our e-mails and electronic transactions – and they plan to invite corporate entities to man the facility as well. We can probably look forward to having quotas set on items to buy. I can hear the call now…”Hello, Ms. Freeacre, this is Hal, from Business Watch. We notice that you have not purchased the minimum telecommunication services and food products to keep your credit in good standing. Is there anything wrong? How may we help you?”

Oh, crap, there I go again… getting all paranoid and shit. But then, there was this Mossad agent surrounded by a zillion cops with advanced weaponry who was arrested and apparently sent back to Israel to suffer consequences after he divulged that the swine flu virus has been weaponized. It may be what is causing this hideous bleeding lungs epidemic in the Ukraine. Suddenly the web bot predictions on immanent disaster don’t seem so far from the mark. If you aren’t certain of what I am referring to, just go to today’s (11/2) Urban Survival site (linked at right) and read the column and follow the links. Or Cryptogon. Just reading this stuff is enough to give one a nose bleed. If Baxter Corp. (Donald Rumsfeld just happens to sit on their board of directors) has, indeed, released the Spanish Flu into the world again, we are looking at millions of deaths. And, if the vaccine is contaminated with adjuvants of squalene and mercury, we can anticipate additional long term suffering beyond measure. Oh, yeah, and that guy from U.N. who was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell who was working on seismic monitoring of possible nuclear testing sites also used to work in biological warfare… well, I’m just connecting some dots here. Don’t mind me. His was the second “suicide” from that lethal stairwell at the U.N., by the way. In addition to the scores of dead micro-biologists world-wide. Nothing here, citizen, just move along and buy something at your local mall.

Well, with all this, the “Death of the Dollar” and the possible attack on Iran by Israel doesn’t seem so far-fetched after all, does it? Oh, wait… we have comforting “news” by Katie Couric, et al, on the lamestream media that assures us that things are looking up for the “recovery.” Just who’s recovery is not real certain, but it looks like it doesn’t extend beyond the reptilian sector. Merciful Mother in Heaven…

The gratitude part of my headline refers, I guess, to our local and cyber communities who continue to carry on and attempt to inform, support and defend each other against these seemingly endless assaults on our collective well-being. On a personal note, I can report success after my first week on the Ultra-Simple detox and anti-inflammation program that I started. I lost twelve pounds in a week, which is pretty remarkable. Twelve less pounds to haul around in case I find myself playing commando. So, that’s a “good thing,” as Martha Stewart would say…lol.

WHO IS THIS MAN?

Be prepared, storms a comin'.

from freeacre

Almost daily, articles are pushed into my face on sites like Jeff Rense or Steve Quale’s that announce that President Obama is a Christian, a Muslim, and just recently, a Jew – sometimes all on the same page!
“ … I suspect his mother’s father Stanley Dunham was Jewish,” Henry Makow writes from Save the Males. Obama’s mother Stanley Anne Dunham, certainly looked and acted like a communist Jew…” he opines.

And, on another site a writer decries the “fact” that the little girl who asked President Obama “why do people hate you?” was a “plant.” Like the six year old was supposed to have independently hopped on a bus and gotten herself to the town hall and into the room full of political wonks to ask a question. Since she arrived with her mother, an active Democrat, he refers to her as “the moonbat mommy with Julia and Comrade Obama.”

Obama is also (depending on which hysterical and polarized site one reads) a Kenyan or an Indonesian. I don’t know why they are making such a big deal about this. There is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law, after all. The constitution rightly attempted to halt the disturbing habit of British Kings ruling by bloodline despite what country they were from. They were sick of their kings being Germans or French or Austrian or whatever. They wanted to insure that the President of our country hailed from this country. Obama’s mother was an American, and he was raised by his American grandparents, and has lived and worked for Americans all his life and his loyalties are here. I don’t give a rat’s ass where he was born. I’d like to have the president who was duly elected be allowed to serve, for once. Those “birthers” don’t seem to give a shit that McCain was born in Panama – and well they shouldn’t. It doesn’t fucking matter. If the Constitution is so important, start looking at the Patriot Act, not the stupid birth issue, for God’s sake. So, what else is going on here?

Some people say he is siding with the fascist takeover by the oligarchs (and, to tell the truth, I find that argument compelling), others think he’s a socialist as he attempts to provide universal health care. Others write that he is part of the global cabal of Illuminati overlords. It is said that he is nationalizing the banks. Conversely, he is accused of siding with the banks taking over the government. Others scream that he is a Godless communist, and ultimately - the Anti-Christ. Oh, yeah, and he’s bi-sexual to boot.

So, I have to ask: Does this seem really strange to you? Unless he is some sort of shape shifter from some cheesy science fiction movie, I am beginning to think that none of these sightings have anything to do with President Barack Obama. And, I have to admit, I am disturbed. Let me explain why:

Let’s go back to the bad old days. Sometimes you can sort of pinpoint a time in history when things began to go seriously awry. Like when Edward Bernaise began to apply his cousin, Sigmund Freud’s, ideas of the structure of the personality to sell products. He used his insights on what motivates people, their desires and their insecurities, and constructed a form of powerful manipulation that has morphed into what we now know as “Marketing.” Or, when a little known resentment-filled house painter got tossed into jail and used the time to write a creepy little book called “Mein Kompf,” - thereby mobilizing a bunch of his compatriots to rise up and feel good about themselves after they lost WWI by telling them that they, as Aryans, were the superior race and their destiny was to rule the world. Or, later, when an economics professor at the University of Chicago named Leo Strauss taught a group of overachievers including Dick Chaney and Donald Rumsfeld that the future of America was to advance the cause of global domination by a fiendish, but tidy, philosophy called “neo-conservativism.” Make up a story, he said, that the sheeple will follow. Never tell them the truth. Make them fearful and ignorant, and never lose site of the goal of power and control of global resources and military might to build a stable empire.

Which leads me to the slimy, but clever little maggot – Karl Rove. As a Young Republican, Karl Rove took up the neo-con standard and merged the money and power of the Republican military/Chamber of Commerce coalition with the energy and paranoia of the Fundamental Armageddonists. Beginning in the Nixon days and running through the first Bush administration, he really got going during the Clinton years. By that time he and his foam-at-the-mouth Christian Coalition minions waged an unrelenting character assassination campaign against Clinton over the heinous “crime” of getting a blow job, of all things. This is when the rest of the world began to suspect that the American people were going nuts. Meanwhile the neo-con agenda really was being advanced with the complicity of Clinton. It was during these years, after all, that NAFTA, CAFTA, and the World Bank began to export the manufacturing base of our land and the regulations on the banking industry were shit-canned with very little fanfare.

But, the Liberal contingent (including me) we so outraged by the outrageous demonizing of Bill Clinton that we began to absolutely hate all things Republican and were distracted from the financial agenda. So, when Bush II got elected, and then really DID do heinous things like bomb countries that had done nothing to us and torture and kill civilians and systematically dismantle the Bill of Rights, we criticized the asshat President with as much or more vitriol as the right-wing minions had used against Bill Clinton. For eight years we despised and insulted and struggled against each other in a no-holds-barred brawl of the “right” versus the “left.”

I would submit that one of the unintended consequences of this on-going national dog fight is what we have now: nobody believes anything that anyone says, nobody knows what is really going on, and the country is polarized beyond anyone’s imagination, leaving it totally dysfunctional. We have driven each other mad.

Enter Barack Obama. I suspect that he is a true centrist. I suspect that, due to his rich heritage of cultures, he is compelled to attempt to heal the divide - much like a child caught in the middle of two parents who are constantly at odds. I fear that he truly desires to be inclusive, to bring out the best in people of all sorts, and probably in denial of their flaws. I fear that he may actually be trusting people around him (even if they are corporate and financial psychopathic scum), and expecting that he can resolve our differences, much like his hero, Abraham Lincoln. And, let us not dwell upon what happened to Mr. Lincoln. It is too scary to me.
And, for his effort, I am afraid that everyone on every side is turning against Barack Obama, except those darn Norwegians. Maybe we’ll find a way to attack them next. Perhaps the next Republican administration will bomb their seed bank in retaliation for the Nobel Peace Prize. Karl Rove is probably working on the plans already.

It’s an old story and one that has been repeated in our lifetimes. Christ was nailed to the cross because he pissed off the Pharisees when he threw the money changers out of the temple. But he also angered his dispossessed followers when he refused to be their militant King. So, when the time came to be judged, nobody stood up for him.

Martin Luther King was assassinated after he over-stepped his role as a racial activist and attempted to enlarge his message to that of peace and freedom for all working people and spoke against the war.

Robert Kennedy, another cerebral, eloquent speaker who wanted to stop the war and work for social justice was shot and silenced.

Are you familiar with the term “racket feeling”? It’s a transactional analysis term that refers to a main bad feeling that people find themselves experiencing over and over due to decisions that they made when they were children. It is usually due to some sort of abuse or discount of themselves. It may be hurt or anger or humiliation, helplessness, rage, inadequacy, betrayal or a plethora of painful feelings. But, whatever one’s racket feelings are, a person often sets him or herself up to feel them one way or another. And, the kicker is that it is done out of their awareness. As Palooka’s Revenge would say, they are in “denial.” They don’t own the feeling. Instead, they project the bad parent or situation onto somebody or something else and then struggle against it and end up re-experiencing the racket feelings over and over.

Barack Obama, it seems to me, is the perfect foil for people’s projections. He is calm rather than emotional, thoughtful rather than reactionary. I don’t think any of us knows what the real deal is with him because we can not see beyond our own projected perceptions, and we have learned not to trust what any of our leaders say. That’s why he can be judged to be everything from the Messiah to the Anti-Christ, a Christian, Muslim, Jew, commie, fascist, corporate tool or bankster overlord. People can comfortably dwell in their favorite emotion of hate, outrage, fear, disappointment, confusion, or even devotion. Will the real Barack Obama please stand up?

Maybe he already has. And, maybe we are so blind and crazy that we can’t see him. Maybe he’s just a guy who is in an impossible situation and he’s trying to do the best he can against enormous odds. Maybe not. I am afraid that we will never know. I think that if I were in his position I’d tell us all to take the job and shove it far into where the sun don’t shine. But because he is part of a larger dynamic, I am afraid that he will be used as a reluctant player in our national game of Doom as we all declare war against each other. Because, we are doing the same thing on other issues as we are doing on Obama. It’s getting to be like the Tower of Babel – nobody understands anybody else on anything.

So, I ask myself, “How do I stop at least the part that I am playing in this insanity?”

I think that I need to identify what my racket feelings are. Personally, I know that mine involve helplessness and betrayal with a good dose of anger. I need to know what I come to the table with, for openers. And then, I need to learn to just stop and put them aside. Look with new eyes. Admit that I don’t know what is going on. Get sane.

Maybe it is time for forgiveness for all our shortcomings. Maybe it’s time to just try to make things better where I can, and attempt to cultivate a peaceful place inside of me. .. some natural place that was mine when I was born, but got lost somehow. And as far as the President goes, I wish him well – whomever or whatever he is. Maybe someday we will get to really know him. Let’s leave the mental door open to the possibility that maybe we and he can do better this time. After all, as John Conner says, “The future is not yet written.”

Birds in back yard, chicks have grown!

DEMOCRACY, CONSTITUTIONS, AND PLUTOCRACY

First, some photos from other regulars on the site.

Palooka's mother lode of chanterellas, don't they look tasty.

Baz's bounty, brown sugar and local honey glazed eels. Looks good eating to me.

DEMOCRACY, CONSTITUTIONS, AND PLUTOCRACY
from Murph

In my last post, I started by saying that I was feeling overloaded with information, saturated with the stuff. So let’s start off with a list of stuff I have been perusing lately.

A 500+ page book that is well documented
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20262742/The-Rich-and-the-Super-Rich

New guest post on Charles Smith site from Oct 5 titled Inalienable Rights and the Constitution; http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

All of the posts at this site are examinations of how things are currently and their relationship to the constitution; http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwinA.htm

This will get you started on what I am writing about in this post.

I am seeing more and more articles lately that are examining the pact from the 1700’s with the government and the citizens of this country called the U.S. Constitution.

One thing that I find interesting that there is more discussion about this phrase from the constitution;
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

In other words, the people have the right to revolt and change the government when it no longer serves their interests. I’m sure all of you are now familiar with the quote from Jefferson concerning a revolt every 20 years is necessary;

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

For more writings by Jefferson on the subject see;
http://www.revolt.net/

Now let’s see, revolts against the government in one form or another in the last 20 years or so.
Gorden Kahl in Arkansas in the 80’s. I was living there at the time and the shootout took place a few miles from where I was living.

The CSA revolt in the 80’s in Arkansas. Here is a short quote about it from; http://www.rickross.com/reference/israel/israel6.html This article has a few facts wrong but gives the essence of this group. Good read.
“The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, as Ellison's group eventually called itself, would be responsible for a church arson in Springfield and for bombing a Jewish Community Center in Indiana. As early as 1983, it talked of blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Ellison and other members of the group even went to Oklahoma City at one point in the early 1980s to case the federal building, which Timothy McVeigh destroyed on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. That raid began April 19, 1985 - 10 years to the day before McVeigh's attack.
An accident at the Covenant compound, and then a raid by local, state and federal officers, broke up the group before it carried out any more violent plans, according to Noble, who served more than two years behind bars for possession of unregistered weapons.”
Actually, I was living there then and not far from their compound and had a friend that took part in the raid by local police. What actually happened is a couple of the members of the group got out of control of the leaders and decided to knock off a Brinks truck and killed a couple of guards. They were survivalists and led the feds on a chase through the mountains for over a month before finally walking out and giving themselves up. I had met a few of the members of the group and got along just fine with them. They offered courses in urban and rural warfare but I never had the money to take them up on it. At the time, they sure seemed legit to me.
The Okalahoma city bombing.
Waco Texas
Ruby Ridge
And then there is 9-11. Was this a random terrorist attack, or an external rebellion against American economic dominance and policies, or a manufactured incidence by our government, or some combination?

Well, we sure do know how those actions turned out. Lots of people killed and nothing changed. In fact, the aftermath of all of this was a rabid increase in power of the executive branch of the government that continues today. It is readably apparent that our government is in the hands of bankers and CEO’s with the president as sham head of state.

In any event, one of our most current severe problems in this country is a lack of citizen insistence that the government operate according to the constitution. If we don’t like the constitution, then put together some other form of agreement on how we are to be governed. It seems obvious to me that the government has no intention of adhering to the constitution and its tenants and that we are rapidly sliding into some form of absolute plutocratic control. Our elections are, and have been, shams of the most severe kind. This is not to say that we haven’t been under control of a plutocracy in the past, (just read the economic history from 1870 through the 1920’s) but I can say that the amount of control has gone up exponentially. I can say that our supposedly constitutional guarantees of freedom and rights have been radically diminished and governmental controls at every level of living have increased dramatically, except of course for the plutocracy. When the robber baron in the early 1900’s got so excessive that it could be no longer tolerated, people in government put some brakes on to their excesses. But then they got the Federal Reserve act passed in 1913. The plutocracy consolidated power and it’s been down hill every since for all of us. Our dollars in purchasing power is now 4 cents when compared to 1944. Our supposed inalienable rights and freedoms are being softly taken away without a meaningful peep out of the population. The harsh debasement of the only people in our society that actually produce anything of value, what we call the blue collar worker, is proceeding apace. I’ve gotten arguments about that kind of statement. Oh come on I retort, what does a supervisor produce, or a CEO, or a banker? Unless you want to talk about endless paperwork, they produce nothing. Even the financiers, the investors produce nothing except more hopeful profits for themselves.

Now I suppose it can be argued that an economy can be built on something other than production of useful goods, like the information economy, or the get your degree economy, or the service economy. None of which is really needed unless you are producing something people really do need, in other words, some kind of production of truly useful goods. The essentials are still food, water, clothing and getting out of hostile weather. It appears obvious to me that pre western civilization, pre industrial societies were able to be self sufficient or very nearly so. But the larger the society, the more it depends on a division of labor and disconnect from the social group as a whole to survive. Much smaller societies tend to have a pretty much of a consensus concerning how they will live and the rules to live by within the group. In larger societies, at least over time, consensus becomes impossible, allowing a ruling elite to take charge. As the ruling elite’s power base expands on the promises to the society at large, they become more rapacious and more authoritative (controlling.)

1) All that is just abstraction. Just the creation of Marketing, Business, and Financial Business School creations that have led us to the sorry state that the nation is in.

2) With the constraints of financial and marketing systems that have metastasized and are ready to blow up and kill the host, I’d say hopefully, all this will go the way of the homing pigeon. What we will need more of is trades people who can fix things and manufacture usable items. Cottage industries that produce items vital to the lives of the people close by.

3) It would appear that fighting the government with the weaponry envisioned by our Founding Fathers is, in the end, futile. It may hold them off for awhile, but in the end, armed resistance is futile. They have the clear advantage in terms of firepower, and are just looking for an excuse to demonstrate it. At least that is what the plutocracy is banking on. I will leave the arguments over this for others to expand on.

4) It could be that better tactic would be to assess where their vulnerabilities lie and take advantage of those. A globalist consumer economy requires consumers. Pretty simple. Resist by not consuming anything that isn’t produced here. Of course the problem revolves around what is not produced in country that is truly needed. My observation is that most of what is produced outside of the country is fluff.

5) They manipulate and bombard us with commercials – disconnect from the satellite and cable and stop purchasing objectionable newspapers.

6) Turn the tables on them. Has your boss taken out a “dead peasant’s” insurance policy on you or your co-workers? Then, take out a “dead boss” policy on him and see if that makes him squirm.

7) Observe what other things they are using to damage or destroy us – and turn it back on them. Obviously, one cannot go into detail.

8) Avoid joining groups that can be infiltrated and manipulated, including political parties and protest groups. Random acts of creative resistance are much harder to identify and punish.

9) Become as self-sufficient and sustainable as possible as a community. Reach out to as many neighbors as you can. Nobody can do it alone (unless you are Baz, living in the New Zealand outback or some such thing and even Baz is dependent on the greater society for his life style).

10) Cultivate happiness. Figure out what your passion is and do it. Their whole evil system is based on unhappy people manipulated into buying or doing things to relieve their mental anguish. Freedom and happiness are the anti-dote. Take those seriously and make them a priority. They are our birthright.

What I find immensely interesting is how an elite cast is created in complex societies, and why the population will tolerate them. It seems to have a relationship to ownership and control of resources and the control of the medium of exchange (money in the case of most societies). Take away the elite ownership of resources (in whatever form) and put it into the hands of the general population and the elite caste systems breaks down. It sure enough appears to me that not allowing it to happen in the first place is a bunch easier than to wrest control away from them later. When this control by the elites is allowed to continue, we end up with a plutocracy, where the primary benefit of the arrangement always awards disproportionately the elites in the form of money and privilege. In other words, egalitarianism is never the outcome of this arrangement. Keep this in mind during the next voting cycle.

Our elder, Caroline's spectacular planers filled with flowers and raspberries, strawberries, potatoes, grapes, tomatoes, cauliflowers, chard and beets. WOW!

WEIRD DREAMS

Comfort food, rabbit, spaghetti, garlic bread

garlic bread from scratch.

Todays eggs

Weird Dreams
By freeacre

This has been a rather odd week. Everything seems distant to me both in place and in time. Lots of suffering and challenges with the earthquakes and tsunamis in Samoa, Indonesia, and the Philippians. The whole Pacific Plate seems to be moving and raising hell all over. It could be just doing what it does, or it could be the beginning of something even bigger, like part of the process of a magnetic pole shift. At any rate, it seems far away and there’s not much I can do about it, except sympathize with the people involved.

Same goes for politics. The drama over the health care proposals seems almost tedious to me despite the importance of the issues involved. Blah, blah, blah… blah, blah, blah…. Insurance companies, Big Pharma, maternity care, abortion craziness, a bunch of old men arguing that pregnancy should not be covered, while their Medicare pays for Viagra enhanced hard-ons. I grow tired of their crap.

The Flu disinformation campaign is seemingly to be just another annoying thing. Are we going to be forced to take the shots? Can we choose to opt out? Is the flu a really big threat? Or, is the vaccine worse? I wish I could just trust the government to do the right thing. I wish we could take the damn shot and be happy that we did the right thing for the protection of the people as a whole. But, of course, we can’t. I mean, I remember when the polio vaccine came out, and what a blessing it was. Same thing for the measles. But, it is different now. I see the agony my neighbor goes through every day with Gulf War syndrome. I see my nephew tragically damaged with autism. Is it the vaccines or some other toxic poisons the FDA has allowed into the environment that is making them so sick? All you can count on is that somebody is making a shitload of money off it and probably writing the laws regarding it as well. But, until they stop my car in the street, or come to my door to administer the shot, it seems far away for now.

Then there is the debacle on Wall St. In the latest Rolling Stone, Matt Taibi s evisceration Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and the SEC as he did Goldman Sachs and the “Federal” Reserve in the previous issue. He analyzes the gargantuan fraud by the Boyz in charge of our financial system and lays them bare. This article coupled with the new Michael Moore movie on capitalism should completely destroy any vestige of legitimacy that the American banking system has. Anyone who continues to invest a dime in securities after this is simply a hopeless moron or a flat out criminal. But, then, we already know that, and Wall Street seems very far away. The savings and pensions of working people all over the world has been evaporated with the trumped up financial froth created from Frankenstein derivatives and collateralized debt obligations. Fractional banking ran amok with the complicity of the regulatory agencies and the bought off congress. One can only imagine the consequences in the international community once this congeals into common knowledge. We are so toast.

But, for now, the money still buys stuff and the electricity is still on. The football game is in the background, and I’ve got spaghetti going on the stove. Everything seems pretty normal (except that the chickens just laid six eggs in a towel on the porch and it’s been snowing for two days).

“Normal,” I say, except for this disturbing dream that I had yesterday:

I dreamed that Murph and I lived in a forest of huge trees next to a river. The trees were Sequoias or Redwoods – really huge. That element probably came from watching the new Ken Burns series on National Parks. (I started talking to myself with the voice of Peter Coyote since watching that as well, but that’s another story…) Anyway, we were planning to climb one of these very tall trees with some sort of parachute and pulley thing. But, when I looked up and saw just how tall this tree was, I told Murph that I figured it was more that I could do. So, the plan got put off, and then the wind came along and blew the gear into the river.

I jumped into a boat and went after it. The current carried it a long way downstream. Eventually, I ended up in an unfamiliar place on the river where a small community of people was gathered. I was hanging out with them and we noticed a cluster of small clouds roiling in the sky. As they approached, the clouds began to disappear revealing luminous space ships within each one. It was broad daylight. Bright sunny day with autumn leaves on the trees by the river. Then, a few fighter jets whizzed past the space ships. We, of course, were dumbfounded. Then, amazingly, additional planes began to appear. But, they were not fighter jets. They were planes that seemed to have been there all along. It’s as though they had just uncloaked and were stationary in the sky, facing off with the flying saucer space ships.

Additional planes began showing up with a sliding door on the side that you could see military guys standing in the doorway trying to reach out and grab some stringy things that the space ships seemed to be dropping. The planes were unusual, in that they could maneuver and hover, much like the flying saucer types. The sky began to fill up with these ships and also larger support ships from both sides. They appeared to be toe to toe and it seemed like an ominous battle was about to begin. This stranger came running up and sat down and called his wife on his cell phone. “Honey,” he said excitedly, “It’s actually happening! It’s an alien invasion – going on right now!”

Well, I was feeling pretty amazed and vulnerable because I realized that I was down the river and away from murph. So, I woke up, and was happy to have him at my side.

Now, what the hell? I do not, as a rule, have dreams like this. As much as I may like to, I do not see auras, have visions, or channel any messages from anywhere. So, I don’t think this is any vision of something that is actually going to happen.

But, I think that it is a manifestation of generalized anxiety about being threatened and vulnerable and basically a spectator of things that I have no control over…like the frigging flu, like the frigging economy, like the frigging earthquakes.

We are surrounded by very big forces (like a forest full of giant trees) that are beyond our pitiful ability to affect. What we can do is stick together and hope for the best.

Anybody else having weird dreams?

We hope Baz doesn't mind us sharing a picture he took of the a sick little Razorback piglet that he found abandoned and attempted to save it. Sadly despite his best efforts, the little guy (named Snorky) succumbed.

WATCHING AND WAITING

Today we have some pictures of Rockpicker and Oldensoul’s fall garden. Killer frost evidently has not hit their area yet. Our garden is about done except for the onions and garlic to yet be fully harvested for the winter.

Rockpickers fall garden, look how it has grown!

Rockpicker and Oldensoul's end of season rock planter with ripening tomatoes.

Squash fest from our garden, an no, we didn't grow all of them. Frost killed off many fruit that were started.

Squash custard with resberries


WATCHING AND WAITING
From Murph

I’ve got to admit that I feel like I am reaching an overload on information. Among all the web sites on the internet and various books and periodicals we try and stay up with, I feel saturated right now. Most of the subjects I am concerned with and some new approaches and ideas I read about are written so well that I wonder what I can talk about on the blog nowadays. One thing that sprang out at me was a new post at the Archdruid blog. He has been on an extensive examination of all sorts of perspectives on the current economic situation and economics in general. Very scholarly stuff and well written.

By now I am sure you frequenters of this campfire are aware that Freeacre and I have unending contempt for most of what our society, government and civilization is and has been doing as long as we have been alive, and before, if our reading of history has any validity at all. We have been anticipating a fall/collapse/revolution so long and have been preparing so long for something along this line to happen that we are sick of the waiting. Let’s get with it on is our frequent mantra.

However, the universe seems rather perverse in its determination to thwart our projections of events. Charles H. Smith recently put up a post that examined the possibility that the dollar will not collapse. Oh darn! The PTB aren’t going to allow that, bad for business. I have a lot of respect for Smith and his perspectives on what is happening financially and socially in this society. His 110 page e-book that nicely condenses his analysis is an excellent read. This can be found at: http://www.oftwominds.com/survival-plus1.html

When we picture what a collapse would be like, we are mostly projecting fantasy into it. Our fantasies around this determine what we do in preparations. Inevitably, collapse/revolution will be different than what we fantasize. It might just be so different that what we do in preparation has no significance at all. And, that conundrum is what I am continually scratching my head over. For the most part, I realize humans are damned poor at future projections. That is not even assuming how many unforeseen consequences can and will happen for any scenario we dream up.

Without some drastic change in thinking, I have little faith in humanity’s ability to make decisions for the good of those living or to be born yet. It sure seems to me that a very large proportion of decisions have these niggling unforeseen consequences that are harmful. Cripes, look at what the indigenous people did on this continent when the white man came, they helped them overcome starvation and look at those consequences.

Among my favorite conspiracy theories is the one of shadow governments; some elite PTB that is controlling events throughout the world for their own nefarious purposes. Unless they aren’t human, are they subject to the same problems in future projections as the rest of us? Are all of their plans going to have consequences they haven’t planned for? I’m sure the elites were not planning to have to deal with a national uprising during the French revolution. Will we have something similar in our case? I am also reasonably sure that the English aristocracies were not figuring on the surety of an American revolution since the Americans were facing such an overwhelming force, nor took into account the tenacity of the rebellion.

So what I am banking on is that the PTB have done a magnitude of overreach, and are doomed to ultimate failure. But then again, maybe not. Much science fiction from the 70’s dealt with the ultimate takeover by some elite group and the consequences. What these novels did not take into account for was the need for vast amounts of non renewable energy to do so. Will that apply today? Does the shadow government have technology that we can only dream of in SF novels? Are they indeed at a point that their ultimate control of the world is at hand? If so, what do we do about it? Bend our knees and pay homage to the bastards? Even so, would humanity be better off or not? It sure seems to me that a vast majority of people are willing to live that way since societies have been doing so for most of recorded history. If freedom from autocratic control by a few is not desirable, when are we going to do what is good for us on an individual and group basis and end autocratic control? Again, without some serious and drastic mind shifts, it is not likely. My observation is that most people want that control, and in some cases, feel it is necessary. Considering the emotional/education level/mental states of the population they might be right.

Whether humanity is ultimately destined to be ruled by an elite few or live in some other manner, I think it would behoove us to carefully examine what we really want and the ultimate consequences of it. I am reminded of the million moron march recently on Washington. What I heard in interviews and read on the signs they were carrying, my impression is that they had no idea about what they were advocating. A very large proportion of the idiot marchers were against socialism and sure looked like they were either in or near retirement age and able to collect social security (a socialist agenda). Didn’t see one sign that advocated ending that or Medicare or ADC or end taxes to support public schools, or military expansion overseas or any or a hundred other “socialist” programs. All they seemed to be concerned with is government control over who their health care providers were. Geez! Don’t they realize that is the case now, except instead of government control it is controlled by the insurance industry? I guess they figure that big corporations know better what is good for us better than the government. Frankly, I don’t buy into either concept.

I reckon we will just have to watch and wait to see how this all works out.
For Belgium from Freeacre