HOW MUCH MORE CAN WE TAKE?

Meet Jake


Meet Ellie

Since the loss of our dog Brie, we have had a bit of emptiness around our place. So, we decided to introduce a bit of chaos back into our lives in the form of two puppies. Whew, what a hand full. We have concluded it is much easier to house break one pup, and not so easy to train two at the same time.


From Murph

Every day, when I scan through multiple news sites and commentaries I am again impressed with our capacity to endure an every increasing amount of problems that keep arising. Chief among these problems is the energy supply in the form of hydrocarbons.

Even though I talk of it frequently, I still, at times, feel that I do not have a real handle on the energy problems and their full implication. It sure enough appears to me that most of the easily accessible hydrocarbons have been extracted. While improved technology has so far supported more expensive extraction processes, there will still be a limit. There is always a limit. Exactly where that limit will be and it’s impact is under intense debate. The abiotic oil folks are adamant about limitless oil availability and yet are not able to answer what appears to me as crucial questions concerning its extraction if abiotic production is indeed a fact, which appears to me to be a tenuous platform to begin with. I read that there is limitless oil being produced all the time from deep in the core of the earth. If this is true, then how come the earth is not covered with oil at its surface? After all, this process has been going on for how long? After millions of years, it would sure seem to me that all that migrating oil toward the surface should be really the dominating liquid of the planet and that is obviously not true. So, even if abiotic oil is a fact, it also appears to me that it also has a limit and its replenishment rate is rather slow, like millennium slow. So, they talk about drilling 5-10-15 miles beneath the surface to tap those pools. That is a very expensive endeavor and despite advancing technology for well drilling, will increase the cost of extraction.

The folks ginning up the oil sands and oil shale extraction don’t seem to recognize that there is an energy-in energy-out ratio that is nearly at par. Even with advances of the technical problems with this extraction, we would have to make some pretty wild leaps in technology to make it economically viable. Without government subsidization of the energy sector, sand and shale extraction is a totally losing endeavor from an economic standpoint. The same can be said about off shore drilling. This of course does not include the extreme environmental degradation from these sources.

It sure appears to me that the data indicates that conventional production of oil is declining. Drilling more holes and extracting more liquid crude has just about had its day. Those big pools of oil are becoming less productive year over year, indicating that the pools are running dry, or at least of low enough extraction as to be non profitable.

If my assertions are any where near reality, our society is living in an extreme position of denial. Somewhere down the time road, total energy extraction will become untenable, costing more in energy extraction than can be realized in benefit.

The implications of this, I think, are enormous. Food production is the final setting for oil depletion. We have numerous examples of attempts at reducing the use of hydrocarbons in producing food. I recently had an interesting web site sent to me.
http://www.nextworldtv.com/page/760.html
This 40 minute film is an British farmer’s explorations into the use of hydrocarbons to produce food from a permaculture standpoint. Toward the end of the film, they briefly explore what food production would look like without the use of hydrocarbons. That is, back to pre 1900’s farming. It is labor intensive to say the least and the film points out that the farming community is ill prepared to go back to animal power to produce food. And this does not even touch on how to put up a distribution system for the food produced with no, or very limited, hydrocarbons. The film asserts that with very different concepts of farming, that it is possible to feed 10 people per acre. That means that for the population of the US, it would take 35 million acres of this methodology to feed the present population if we all went primarily to vegetarianism and very little meat products. Here is some interesting data http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
This site asserts that there is only 349 million acres that is planted in crops and most of that is to produce feed for meat production.

The next question I ask is how much of that land could produce food with vastly reduced use of hydrocarbons? Actually, very little of it. Most of the land used for agriculture has been literally killed for biodiversity and non-hydrocarbon farming and this is the result of factory farming and monoculture farming, GMO crops along with government subsidies. And this does not even start to address the quality of food produced by these methods. It also does not address the irrigation aspect and how water is also becoming a big problem. Along with climate changes and some real dire predictions on how that is going to change food production we have a very serious problem that is not being addressed.

In other words, we have a food crisis staring us in the face somewhere down the road. And this is just our country and the crisis is even worse for other countries that are being drastically affected by climate changes. It appears to me that the production of food to feed populations might possibly become a very real problem before long. It already is showing some cracks and I expect them to get worse.

Of course, we can expect that the solutions that will be advanced will be more of the same practices but on an even larger scale, which appear to me to be self-defeating and will end badly. That is, large population die-off simply due to non-availability of food, and/or food that is so adulterated as to cause premature deaths of much of our population.

I would suppose that with enough time, humans might very well be able to physiologically adapt to this food adulteration, but I suspect there won’t be enough time for that to happen. That kind of adaptability takes rather long lengths of time to accomplish. Even if we had a national policy to begin change over to a more sustainable method of food production right now, the amount of time it would take to make the land viable again would be measured in decades, not even multiple years. A great deal of our farmland has literally been poisoned to death by modern agricultural practices and it will take considerable time to reverse that. I do not see any national inclination to even begin to talk about it. The political hold that big agricultural concerns have on the government is an iron fist at this time.

I expect to see a push to put even more land into factory production of food to be initiated, thus destroying even more whole ecosystems. Even reinstitution of a victory garden on a mass scale is not going to solve this problem. During WWII the victory garden is credited with nearly 40% of the food supply. It would not be enough today if you could sell the concept on a social wide basis. All of the experimenting with organic/alternative/permaculture will not work without a national policy and support, and is not going to make a dent in this problem, and even if it was tried, the fight with big ag businesses would be fierce and protracted. From my perspective and information, any change should have been started many years ago and I don’t see it taking place in any near future.

On a personal basis, the backyard/frontyard production of food is about our only alternative and that has a whole host of problems in and of itself, Zoning laws, being only one obstacle. Land use descriptions are another.

In our area, I have frequently made descriptions concerning the problem with home based food production; quality of land for growing and climate being the big ones. Another problem that is showing up right now is land contamination with herbicide use. One of our local big time self-sufficiency gardeners has suddenly run up on this big time. Our soil has to have soil amendments, and the most economically means of doing this is animal manure. Herbicides have shown up in her garden and she is strictly an organic gardener. Now our area has a lot of horse folks so there is lots of horse manure available. Problem is, to be able to take your horses to other areas, you have to have certification that your animals are fed weed free hay. In order to have weed free hay, you have to buy or produce hay that is heavily contaminated with herbicides, principally for our area, is Milestone, made by Dow chemical Co. The aminopyrolids (one of the chemicals in the herbicides) taken in by the animal, among other consequences, is excreted in the manure. If that manure is used for soil amendments, it kills broadleaf garden plants, which comprise most of the edible food produced in a garden. Its life span under ideal situations is about 5 years in the soil. Testing for and removal is quite expensive. Soil tests for it run about $250 bucks a whack, although, if you want to take the time and effort, you can determine it for yourself. Plant some seeds in a cup with the suspected soil. When the seeds sprout, and grows above the soil, if the leaves curl up and in, it is probably contaminated with aminopyrolids or even some other chemical soup. The curling of the leaves is the result of interruption of normal hormonal metabolism of the plant, how most of the herbicides work.

All of this does not address the contamination of soil and surface water with aluminum particulates from aerial spraying, that is still being denied by the government and a large amount of the general population as being conspiracy theory. Interesting how Monsanto is applying for GM seed release that is supposedly impervious to aluminum contamination.

I have to conclude that food is going to be the next really big emergency, and probably in our lifetimes. I wish I had some hard answers to this problem but I don’t and the permaculture advocates are only a partial answer and I doubt that we will have enough time to solve this problem before the crisis is upon us anyway. It takes a lot of effort and time to grow your own food needs. Most folks are simply unwilling to go to that amount of effort. We work at it, but we still have to supplement our food from the store. City folks are in a real bind and suburban folks are hindered by regulations. In the more rural areas, land use laws can be a very real impediment. We have them here too. Homeowners associations are also a biggie for stopping individual food production. It is such a complex problem with no real governmental will to alleviate these problems that I become despairing of it being solved. Maybe the reason there is no effort to solve these problems is because there is an agenda to not do so. By appearance alone, I can subscribe to that conspiracy.

All we can do is continue to do the best we can.

ON PETER KROPOTKIN

That picture of a bearded gentleman is Peter Kropotkin, the subject of today's post

ON PETER KROPOTKIN from murph

I finally got the formatting to look right. Thanks Hotsprings.

I mentioned some time ago that I was delving into Kropotkin’s writings. His stuff is not something to breeze through with understanding and is taking me some time to absorb his concepts. Had a friend mention to me that Kropotkin was excellent at putting him to sleep. I mentioned back that I felt the same way about Eckhart Tolle.

I think it behooves us to ask some questions; what is the legitimate function of government, and how powerful should it be?

We currently have a majority of our citizens that are totally dependent upon the government to enable them to live, dependent upon that body. Is this a legitimate function of government? If you are of a more politically liberal point of view, yes it is. Some of the arguments for this are hard to refute. What do we do with citizens that for various reasons cannot support themselves, temporarily or permanently? Should the government have the mandate to confiscate fruit of an individuals labor to support someone else?

Of course, without government-backed efforts, we would not have our highway system, most universities, most research labs, and stifled advanced research. Without government backing, our lives would mostly be at a much lower “standard of living”.

All of which evades the point. Is it legitimate for a government, in a moral or even a ethical sense, to forcefully confiscate money from you for projects that you may not approve of? Should the government have the ability to force you into military service for wars that have an agenda we care little about? I am using this in a broad sense. A government that creates the financial situation for which the only way a young man can get 3 hots and a cot and must join the military is still confiscating your life. Of course, that young man in actuality has a choice, between bad and maybe a worse situation.

From a political view, Jesus was an anarchist. Your only loyalty was to God.

Kropotkin is what I would call a fundamental anarchist in that whatever government is formed has to be with the agreement of the population involved and if it becomes intrusive or advocating actions that people can’t stand, it is dissolved.

Kropotkin and modern anarchists insist that human relations should all be voluntary right from the start. Kropotkin asserted that people will act morally from an innate need for the relationships.

One of the best futuristic novels (IMO) that speculates on what an anarchistic society would look like is “The Probability Broach” by L. Neil Smith.

In the modern anarchistic thought, I have put this in the blog before.

YOU MAY ALREADY BE AN ANARCHIST
It’s true. If your idea of healthy human relations is a dinner with friends, where everyone enjoys everyone else’s company, responsibilities are divided up voluntarily and informally, and no one gives order or sells anything, then you are an anarchist, plain and simple. The only question that remains is how you can arrange for more of your interactions to resemble this model.

Whenever you act without waiting for instructions or official permission, you are an anarchist. Any time you bypass a ridiculous regulation when no one’s looking, you are an anarchist. If you don’t trust the government, the school system, Hollywood, or the management to know better than you when it comes to things that affect your life, that’s anarchism, too. And you are especially an anarchist when you come up with your own ideas and initiatives and solutions.

As you can see, it’s anarchism that keeps things working and life interesting. If we waited for authorities and specialists and technicians to take care of everything, we would not only be in a world of trouble, but dreadfully bored—and boring—too boot. Today we live in that world of (dreadfully boring!) trouble precisely to the extent that we abdicate responsibility and control.

Anarchism is naturally present in every healthy human being. It isn’t necessarily about throwing bombs or wearing black masks, though you may have seen that on television; (Do you believe everything you see on television? That’s not anarchist!). The root of anarchism is the simple impulse to DO IT YOURSELF; everything else follows from this.

Here is an interesting take on anarchism and the early Jews; http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/03/29/the-subversive-commandments/

In the previous post, I mentioned one aspect of Kropotkin’s concern about biological survival of a species. He asserted that it was only through cooperation would a thinking species survive. That survival of the fittest only pertained to individuals, not to a group.

Kropotkin’s greatest moral attribute of humans is the dictate of “treating other as you would be treated, under similar circumstances”. He further states;

“We all love moral strength, we all despise moral weakness and cowardice. Every moment our looks and words show the repugnance we feel towards cowardice, deceit, intrigue, want of moral courage. We betray our disgust, even when under the influence of a worldly education we try to hide our contempt beneath those lying appearances which will vanish as equal relations are established among us”. Sounds pretty egalitarian to me.

Kropotkin is a great believer in equality, across the board and respect for the individual. He does not support the mutilating of an individual in the name of some moralistic ideal.

Kropotkin was born in 1842, and makes many observations to his contemporary society. I find it interesting that what we bitch about today, he was bitching about back in the late 1800’s; Hypocrisy, deceit, wars, inequality, lies, backstabbing, and a general restriction on individual freedom. He was deeply concerned with the hierarchy of authority and its abuses. He goes to great length to demonstrate the morality of an anarchist system of social organization. He sometimes becomes rather bitter with religion, pointing out the hypocrisy of that social force and its abuse of hierarchy.

I have much to go in reading Kropotkin’s essays and dissertations. But so far, he was a man of his times and just as applicable in today’s world, and for me, a very interesting man to learn about. There are a few questions that have come up concerning his writings, but maybe they will be answered as I plow through his stuff. I suspect that his influence today will be similar to his time, a small but vocal adherents to his ideas.

It appears obvious to me that a strong central state will always become corrupt and self-serving, always, at least so history teaches us. Central states always seek control over everything that can be controlled. Their dissolution may take some time, but dissolution always occurs. Central states, always, are run by a very small minority of elites that always have an agenda that is self-serving. Even during the formation of this country and its constitution, which was rather radical at the time, the folks writing the document were self-serving, looking ahead by generations for a continuation of elitist control.

It sure appears to me that Kropotkin’s contention that only an anarchistic society can actually survive over the long term at the benefit of all of its citizens with maximum freedom. This would necessitate that each person is willing to take responsibility for their actions and that only freely accepted associations would be the norm. That societies are prone to grant power to the few in a hierarchy because of the promises they make to grab power keeps us from having a free society. If a more anarchistic society is ever to become a reality, there will be great pain within the society to form it because of this dependency. The present attitude of populations across the globe, and its dependency on a strong central government, does not bode well for such a change. However, folks have to make a decision as to which causes more harm and hardship over time. It is the same with our present economic situation. The pain that would have to be endured by the population to cure what ails us economically is unacceptable to most folks. But, it will come, it always does.

Elections - Think Local

photo credit: Time Magazine A Blast from the Past - Note how well third party or alternative candidates have done. by murph I have refrained from saying too much on this blog about the coming election, and like the last election in 2008, the very low probability about whether it will even be held. Remember back in 2008 there was some speculation whether there would be a contrived crises and elections would be put off? It didn’t happen then and I really don’t expect it to happen this time around. It would seem to me that we are going to have only a choice between two candidates that have no significant difference in foreign and domestic policies and economic policies. Ron Paul has only one thing that seems to really differentiate himself from the others, (the dismantling of the federal reserve) and that seems to be going over like a lead balloon. I am currently convinced that Paul has no chance; the financial folks are simply not going to allow that to happen. The Libertarian party candidates so far simply have nothing really new to say about anything and do not even adhere to their own party platform and haven’t enough traction to have a chance. ANY candidate that would actually dare to stand up and advocate any real changes and improvement in our national predicament can not get coverage in the mass media and in today’s world, has no chance at all. Carl Denninger, of The Market Ticker, had some very pertinent comments on this in his Saturday April 29th postings that talks about this. Here is a quote from that posting; “How about these ideas -- all of which are very Libertarian? · All the fraudsters who were involved in the 2007-08 financial collapse are going to be investigated and where possible indicted and imprisoned, starting with those who ripped off the most money. How many jobs and homes were lost in the last few years and how many people would vote for a candidate that said this and actually meant it? I'm willing to bet there's not one person in America of voting age who was not impacted personally by this series of scams and frauds or has a family member or close friend that was. Oh sure, you won't get any Wall Street votes with this platform plank, but they're the 0.1%, not the 1%. · The banking system will be put on a One Dollar of Capital basis when I am elected, preventing you from being ripped off again, and wage and environmental arbitrage will be ended through the Constitutional process of tariffs to end the abuse of people and the environment that happens to also offshore our manufacturing jobs. Again, how many jobs have been lost and how much looting has taken place? Couple this with my monetary inflation and income graphs and you have an instant winner -- show the people that they have had 10% or more of their purchasing power stolen annually for the last decade! · The monopolists in the medical system will have their privileges revoked and the free market will be restored. The drug that is available for $2 in Canada but costs $25 here will be able to be imported by anyone who wishes; your cost for medical care will collapse. You won't need insurance for other than catastrophic events such as a heart attack as everything else will be affordable on a minimum wage job. Yes, you won't get one vote from the pharmaceutical industry this way (or one campaign dollar) but you will get votes from Seniors and everyone else who currently can't afford reasonable medical treatment and who has seen their insurance expenses go to the moon. Incidentally that's all the small business owners, self-employed and once you educate people, those who work for big businesses and union employees as well! · With those steps along with a real foreign policy (see my link here) we could actually balance the Federal Budget. Not the weasely crap that Johnson parades around with claiming he'll submit a balanced budget (but note he doesn't say he'll veto one that is not balanced when the bills get to his desk!) but a real balanced budget that allocates funds only from what's actually taxed. · Yes, I recognize that this will result in an immediate 10% or so economic contraction in GDP -- once. But the cleaning out of the bad debt in the system is both necessary and healthy. See 1920/21 for what happens when you do the right thing -- the asset price crash comes, as does the bankrupties,(sic) but immediately following that is economic recovery, realignment and progress.” Now, of course, all of these ideas would also get no play in the mass media, the only place you would hear about it would be on the internet. Just like with the current Ron Paul blackout. It appears to me that the political elites and the financial elites are so intertwined that this kind of reformation is currently impossible. The appearance that this intertwining is going to eventually collapse this nation, and others as well, is completely immaterial. These folks are not stupid, they know damned well what will be the outcome of the continuance of our current policies. I therefore have to conclude that it is deliberate. These folks in power evidently have a vision of the outcome of these policies that has nothing to do with national and population health. It is some kind of a New World Order agenda that we have only a hazy and incomplete picture of and thus a whole bunch of speculation by us peons. I suspect that Denninger’s projection of a 10% reduction in GDP is minimalist. I suspect it would be a lot more, and while true it would be just once, it would be a disaster for some time. Contractions like that last for quite some time. During this campaign, I notice that no candidate wants to deal with the actual issues of constitutionality, energy, environmental degradation, and actual population well being. Even Ron Paul is mostly a single-issue candidate, seemingly thinking that his fix will fix all that ails this nation. I will posit that there is no single fix for what ails this country and for that matter, the rest of the world. In my life experiences, there simply ain’t no silver bullet, no panacea to cure all that is so deadly wrong with western culture in particular. Western culture has existed since the Roman times by looting other areas of the world. Empires, including the present one, have developed sophisticated wealth pumps into the elites pockets that create impoverishment in the subjected countries, wars and environmental disasters. It also appears that this has taken place throughout history, even pre Roman. The difference is that the world was rather sparsely populated and the worldwide damage was limited to regional areas. Now, it is a total worldwide problem. I see no means for this to end, unless by some kind of outside influence. Alien interjection? Even with that----? Even with that, we have what sure appears to me to be what we call ”human nature” to contend with; desire for power, desire for wealth, selfishness, greed and all the other assumed negative attributes of being human. And this is taking into account those few individuals in the world population that do not buy into that mode of thinking. My experience is that many of the folks that claim they do not buy into it, when the chips come down, actually do. When self-interest is threatened, we are going to resist, or at least talk about resistance. No political candidate at the national level is going to base a campaign on the rejection of what appears as the primary parts of “human nature”; limiting of greed, selfishness and the desire for wealth. No politician in our present day and age is going to advocate policies that are contrary to the elitist’s desires. He can’t possibly win. Every one of the panaceas I come across are false thinking. Everything is too interconnected for a silver bullet to cure what ails us. It would take a massive change in attitudes and the consequent change in policies that are not on the horizon that I can see. We can play around with all kinds of speculations about what the elitist’s agenda’s are and how to counter it. But we are doomed to failure if we do not have a huge attitude change about human’s role and place on this planet. There will be no changes until the majority of the population realizes just how much they have been manipulated by a very few members of the population. Those few people that do understand this, are simply not influential enough to affect significant change. Along with the national elections going on, States and local elections are also taking place. Our organization here, (Citizens Action Group, CAG) held a “meet and greet” the candidates forum. We did it a bit different. Each candidate could speak briefly on what they considered the 2 most basic issues on a local basis. Then, it was one on one question and answer period where the folks in attendance got to circulate around and talk to as many candidates as they could. IMO, it was one of the more successful forums I have attended. I found it amazing how little each candidate really understood the local issues, with a few exceptions. I actually talked with a judge running for that office that did seem to understand a lot of it. Some of the candidates for different offices seemed to be in some kind of outer orbit that I simply could not fathom. Of course there was the usual “got to create jobs” and the got to have “growth” bunch. Only 2 candidates seemed to be able to grasp that “growth” was the problem, most of them not understanding that resources for “growth” were limited and that actual sustainability was important with no growth, you know, the standard business Chamber of Commerce position, the “if you ain’t growing you are dying” position. With a couple of candidates I asked how growth could occur with resources becoming a limiting factor. They sure didn’t want to deal with that question. I also asked what they wanted to do about the herbicide problems. They only looked confused, like “what problem?” I asked one candidate about aerial spraying. He just laughed, said he wasn’t into conspiracies. Now I will admit that from personal exposure, at least at the local level, most of the folks that take on political office spend a huge amount of time at long meetings and study concerning what they are in office to do. They also must spend a lot of time going out and meeting their constituents and believe it or not, they also have personal issues and a life to live too. With a very limited amount of time available they simply can’t get up to speed on every issue that other folks are concerned with. It is very easy for them to depend on “authorities” to give them the low down and never check out that information. Which means that many actual critical issues are never brought to their attention and the contradictions of information. At the local level, they don’t have the money to put together staff that has checks and balances concerning their information. So a lot of bad decisions are always going to be made. And, god forbid if they advocate something that is unpopular with their constituents, regardless as to whether it is the best decision. Got to admit that I couldn’t do it. Got to admit that I am cynical enough that I probably will not bother to vote for anything above the local elections where some control over events are possible. Not only do I have very limited real knowledge of national candidates positions, (limited to national MSN pronouncements) but I also assume they are never going to tell us what their real positions are anyway. We have been lied to so much I don’t really understand how anyone can accept what they say. Very short memories? Sorry for the long rant. Nothing new in this post. Just putting it together in a condensed fashion.

Darwin? Not So Much....

by muroh

Hot Springs Wizard, in the last post, put up a link to Survivalacres blog with a posting on his view of “bugging out” when the SHTF. I have been advocating much the same thoughts on this for a long time now and have occasionally mentioned some of my thoughts on the subject at the campfire. However, I have a few disagreements concerning his conclusions and the scenarios he offered.

He starts off with the idea that a family man decides to abandon wife and kids and hit the wilderness with a backpack when things turn absolutely sour and lists in detail what he is leaving behind and the consequences. No problem with that scenario but personally I don’t know any men that would be willing to abandon their family like that. Granted, some might be so inclined, but most would try and make it with the family I think, maybe even with a few others at the same time. Safety in numbers and all that implies. The problem with this is that very few people from modern society are actually knowledgeable enough to even try and pull it off. That is, the death rate for such attempts would be quite high, probably around the 90% mark.

Let’s take a look at some things he didn’t mention.

Depending on your locality and what kind of environment you are escaping into, food, water and environmental protection are the primary concerns. In a desert environment heat, water and food would be very hard to overcome. In the northern environments, cold weather is a real problem. None of these problems are impossible to overcome, but so few would be prepared to deal with it as to be a nonsensical try. Remember the Apaches from the early history in America? They did it.

Some time ago, I had a young fellow (20 something) tell me that if things got real bad, he would head off into the wilderness and be self sufficient as he knew how to hunt and fish and build rough shelters. I asked him if he knew how to make his own clothes, how to make gunpowder, how to replace his supplies as they broke or were used up and how he would make the time to do so if he did know how. I got a silent stare. I then asked him just how much game he figured was available and how many other folks would be trying the same thing. I suggested that there would be so many folks so desperate for food that the game would rapidly disappear or become very wary and very difficult to get to. We aren’t living in the 16th century any more, with abundant game and wildlife to sustain humans to any large degree. They would soon be gone. Then what? Plus, I would think there would be a whole lot of folks out there trying to find whatever was edible and willing to take whatever you had.

If you read the diaries and what information there is available concerning the folks that did this kind of living back in the very early days of this countries settlement, it was a very tough way to live in comparison to today. Our modern way of living does not prepare us for this, even close.

What Survival Acres did not mention is the idea that living in a SHTF scenario will demand a much lower standard of living and a much greater demand on an individuals or families ability to adapt, to become much more sustainable by their own efforts. Living in a large urban center doesn’t make that very possible. You will have to supply much, if not all, of your own food and water right off the top. Until the human population is vastly reduced and game recovers (if that will even be possible due to environmental degradation) people are going to have to figure out how to grow their own food wherever they are. If you are living where this is flat out impossible you will need to get somewhere where it is possible. Then, you will have to deal with those folks that figure looting and stealing is the best way to go.

This has little to do with temporary dislocation due to some kind of disaster like volcanoes, or flooding or even radiological dangers. Human populations running away from immediate dangers are common enough. I am not going to even try and deal with cosmological disasters like pole reversals, meteor impacts, continental shifts, rising oceans, or extreme sun activity.

If we look at recorded human history and speculate on unrecorded human history, we can see that small bands of humans survived very well over fairly large land areas in all kinds of environments. But, survival of individuals without the support of some amount of other humans was very rare indeed. The survival needs were broken down into fairly specialized skills that contributed to all of the group; those that learned to make clothing, tools, shelter, hunting, finding water, and, yes, fighting.

One of the more specific thinkers of the early 1900’s was Peter Kropotkin on biology and politics. He maintained that the concept of Darwin’s survival of species by the fittest was off base. He maintained it was cooperation that insured species survival, particularly humans. The survival of individuals by the fittest worked ok, but not for a species. After all, over 90% of all the species that have ever inhabited this planet are now gone, become extinct. Without cataclysmic interruption, it appears that humans are the best suited to for survival as long as they cooperate with each other in that endeavor. It sure appears to me that humans have ceased to really be cooperative to survive, and, instead have become entranced with individual survival; the whole social Darwinism concept that seems to be predominating today.

Our environment has warmed up, but is still wet and cold. We have begun to plant some early starts for the garden in the greenhouse and the cold cases. I’ve got some small engine repairs and clean up to do and a whole bunch of clean up on the property to get done. Finally the wintered over garlic, onions and rhubarb are poking up. It’s still so cool that nothing else is showing signs yet of interest to do much. Warm enough though that the chickens are perking up on the egg laying. Still have to determine what hens to cull out for not being productive at all. I’ve got about 60 rabbit hides drying to get to the tanning when I have the time. I’m really missing Brie.

A Dragon Tattoo?

On a brighter note, Rockpicker's Seeds of Peace. Nice.


Rockpicker's Wintered-over spinach

freeacre

We watched a remarkable movie a few nights ago. It was the original "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo," produced in Sweden. Soon, we'll be getting the American version which won Academy Awards in February. This film is haunting to me, and I can hardly wait to see the different versions and sequels. The leading character, Lisbeth, seems almost feral. Unfortunately, I have not read the books, so my understanding may be a bit limited. But, despite that, I find the character compelling. Apparently, she was molested as a child by her father, and her depressed mother was not able to help. She got revenge on her father by throwing gasoline in his face and setting him on fire when she was nine. She grew up in a mental hospital and is out now, but still under supervision. Turns out she is a computer whiz with a photographic memory, and it delves into a strong story line about an investigation on which she collaborates with a journalist. Anyway, I can't seem to get it out of my head.

I wonder if she is a prototype of the generation to come. Born into an abusive dysfunctional family, institutionalized and under surveillance for the majority of her adolescence, probably drugged, bitter, and distrusting of most everyone and everything, the girl is unswerving in her antipathy towards the greater culture, disdainful of social interaction, and determined to look out for herself. With her piercings and dark clothing, she looks goth and is almost mute. I wonder - with cell phones and the internet and possible rfid chips made mandatory, what effect will it have on the ones raised with this onerous burden of no privacy? She has been damaged, it shows, and it's not going away anytime soon.

What happens to us when every person and authority whom we have been taught is there to help us, betrays our trust? What happens to our children (and ourselves) when it is demonstrated that our government is a fascist, authoritarian state, our churches are run by pedophiles and and hypocrites, our news if full of lies, our police are thugs, our bankers and business leaders are global elitists with no loyalties to country or to people, and the local government is loaded with corrupt, self-serving miscreants?

Classic examples of betrayal include Judas selling out the location of Jesus to the Philistines for thirty pieces of silver; Brutus turning against Julius Caesar and stabbing him; William Wallace betrayed on the battlefield by the nobles and his army left to perish.

On a more personal note, betrayal is so hurtful because it usually involves someone or something that is very significant to you who goes back on their word and leaves you twisting in the wind. Often the betrayal leads one to suspect that a core belief may not be true, and it can shake up one's world view or self-concept. It is worse when the person who betrays you is someone or something that you love. You feel that you have been played for a sucker. One wonders how long this has been going on. Did the person ever love you or was it always just a maneuver to get what they wanted? If it happens enough, one can become jaded, unable to trust, or to allow one's self to fall in love.

In the movie, Lisbeth's determination to protect herself, and her rage when she cannot do so, turns ruthless and cold with her violent revenge and calculating retribution. I have to admit that I found it to be most satisfying. That is not an easy confession for one like me who has been a card-carrying New Ager, quasi Buddhist, who believes in forgiveness, One Love, etc. If a wave of enlightenment is headed our way that leads to a transforming dimensional shift, I suppose that I will be left behind.

Well, we may not have much time before we find out. The Earth is ringing like a bell at almost all of the live seismic monitoring sites: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/monitoring/operations/heliplots_anss.php
The West coast and inland US is experiencing multiple earthquakes in areas both known and not known for activity: http://quakes.globalincidentmap.com/ The Sun and the earth's electro-magnetic shields seem to be affected by the approach of a dark, dwarf star just beyond Pluto, discovered recently by Spanish astronomers: http://thecelestialconvergence.blogspot.com/2012/04/celestial-convergence-memes-of-second.html And, radiation from Fukushima is an on-going environmental nightmare.

All this might be considered a good thing, compared to what disasters are manifesting in the financial and political idiocracy fronts. At least, it would level the playing field.

Maybe it's time to get a dragon tattoo.

First day of spring, 4"-6" of snow. Mother nature plays a joke?

SOME CONFUSION from Murph

I spend a rather large amount of time reading different financial sites every day. I do this with the realization that without some really focused study on my part, understanding the details of the financial and banking markets is beyond me. I have to admit that I simply do not have the drive to do the detailed study and I suspect that most people feel the same way. Since the financial markets and the banking stuff is such an important part of our society today, not doing this study is to our complete disadvantage. We really don’t understand the intricacies of what is going on. Although, for most of us the broad macro overview is adequate. Friday’s posting (3-16-12) from Charles Smith concerns “hedging” which he maintains is a part of a majority of citizen’s activities, in that buying insurance of any type is “hedging” and so is saving cash. Hedging is a means to minimize losses, and Charles posits that it is primarily a benefit to the wealthy, since it takes money to do it. Poor people simply do not have the means to protect themselves by this method from catastrophic loses.

Take health insurance. This is a hedge to limit the out of pocket expenses of an expensive health problem or even a catastrophic one. If you want this hedge, you either have to have a class A-1 health insurance policy from your employer (that in fact you ultimately pay for) or you have to pay for such a policy out of pocket. I don’t know about you folks, but we simply do not have the financial resources to pay that out of pocket expense of private insurance. If you have a 6 figure income, it’s not that bad an expense, coming in around $5-$10 grand or so yearly expense. For those of us in the very low monthly income level and are of retirement age, unemployable and experiencing health problems, the only alternative is government coverage through Medicare and Medicaid. Because these hedges limit rather severely the amount of money that the government will pay out for medical costs, many doctors will not even accept Medicare/Medicaid patients. If you show up at the emergency door of a hospital for an emergency medical problem (read heart attack, stroke or accident) the hedge only pays a partial cost of treatment. You are billed for the balance. It is obvious that those of us on SS are not going to have the resources to pay that balance of payment. So, the medical establishment has three options.

1.Forgive the balance, 2. Refuse treatment (called triage) 3. Put you into, for the rest of your lifetime, debt servitude. This can take the form of confiscation of your assets upon death (depending on what state you live in). This method is contained in the very small print on contract forms with state medical insurance forms.

So, financial hedging is very common in all of our society. Where I get pretty confused is in trying to understand the hedging that is predominate within the financial and banking industry. Where it really gets tangled up is in dealing with the companies who issue the hedges against loss and the TBTF institutions. It appears that the government, due to a huge investment by PAC’s, is determined to allow companies to buy these hedges and keep the profits but if they fail, we as citizens have to pay for them. In common usage, it means that these giant companies get to keep the profits but socialize (transfer payments to the general society) any losses they incur. That means that there is no risk factor they have to consider in issuing these hedges and the profits are immense. This of course, leads to a great deal of corruption within the financial system and eliminates virtually all risk factors in its operation.

In my reading of the financial news every day, and trying to understand it at least partially, I am intimidated by the sheer complexity of it all. It appears to me that there is absolutely no way the normal working person is going to understand it. I even wonder if the folks that specialize in the financial part of our society really understand it. Take the tax structure. It is so complex, how could a person ever get through and understand it much at all? I think this is done deliberately. If you don’t have the bucks to hire an army of folks to sort through all this crap, you are being screwed blue and tattooed and the folks (the 1%) that do have the bucks benefit enormously.

This type of complexity that most folks neither understand nor can they deal with on any kind of rational basis is contributing to the decrease in our standard of living and to the enrichment of the elites. Investments by some proportion of the 99% that have some money left over from daily living are becoming non-existent. Looking at economic data, the volume of folks that are investing (called investment volume) in the huge assortment of investment vehicles, has radically declined; only the wealthy can now do so. The commoners are simply not there in mass anymore. Investing in a company to pay dividends in the future during retirement is not a safe place to put money anymore. Now, investments are being made at super nano second speeds on very small margins and even these are becoming very risky. No wonder that the use of hedge funds is so popular among the financial elite, and those are backed up by our tax dollars.

Most of the financial sites I read indicate that the stock market is not an accurate indicator of the financial health of the economy. And yet, that is exactly what the lame stream media would have us believe. That is, if stocks are going up, we are doing just fine. Never mentioning the one big elephant in the room, financial bubbles. Take a look at Apple stocks right now. They are zooming into the stratosphere of stock prices, carrying most of the increase in stock prices. Sure looks like a financial bubble to me, another one. Remember Worldcom and Enron? These bubbles inevitably lead to the small investor losing it all. The housing bubble is a good example. And yet, folks will jump on these bandwagons every time, driving up prices until they burst apart and most will lose their shirts. Oh yeah, some make out just fine and they are the ones with insider information or are very lucky (read smart investors).

I look at financial graphs every day. I have a problem with most of them in regards to folks using them for an investment strategy. We know with no doubt that the markets are very much manipulated. So of what use are financial charts in predicting the future of the markets? Oh yes, sometimes they are dead on, but very seldom. Investments in the fundamentals of companies no longer appear to have much validity. Trend lines are not a reliable indicator of good investments. There simply is too much manipulation and corrupt cronyism within the financial world.

Many, I suspect, share my yearning for a simpler more basic society without all the complexities. But, extreme complexity is what we got to live with. It is nearly impossible to completely withdraw from it. We can simplify our own lives to a very large extent, that is, until we are abruptly brought up short by unforeseen events, like health issues and financial impoverishment. We can prepare to some extent for this, but without fairly hefty financial backup, in an instant, all we have can disappear from circumstances we have no control over. This is a fact of life from the very earliest recording of history. The purpose of government (according to the liberal political folks) is to protect the citizens from such catastrophe. This propagates a dependency upon the government. The radical conservatives want to end this entirely and make it every man for himself. An attitude of “I got mine and if you don’t get yours, too bad” position. Helping with these attitudes is religion, social activism, social Darwinism, our educational system and general social self centered apathy along with the excessive complexity of the society.

Contributing to all of the corruption and manipulation in the financial markets is the propaganda pushed out daily by the lamestream media. The most influential tools ever developed to accomplish this is Edward Bernays. A quote from him;

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” – Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

This propaganda shows up every day in misleading government statistics, reporting by the laimstream media and the behavior of the majority of the population. Can you believe that vehicle sales have been increasing substantially lately? They account for around 9% of the supposed economic recovery, while average income per family is decreasing and actual unemployment is increasing. Now where are these sales concentrated? Large expensive gas guzzling vehicles are the largest sales volume, which is also including leases. (charts and commentaries from Zero Hedge, Charles Smith and Carl Denninger). Now what I find interesting, with few exceptions, these vehicles are purchased with debt and yet the full price of the vehicle is included in the GNP. In other words, the piling on of debt is counted as income and thus the “economic recovery”. This also indicates that many folks are buying expensive vehicles that the loaning facility never expects to have paid back because they are loaned to folks without the economic means of paying off the loan. Many of the economic stats and charts indicate that consumer debt is increasing rather than decreasing and all of this debt is contributing to the economic recovery. If you are interested in more details of this take a look at this posting;
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-asleep-wheel
The main chart on my computer is mostly covered up by adds but the chart can be expanded to full size if you want to see the details.
To those folks that are constantly trying to reassure me that everything is just fine and we have smart folks at the tiller of the ship of state and nothing to worry about, I cry bull shit.

I guess I find relief from it all by escaping into a far less complex life of Louis L’amour novels.

Here Comes the Sun

Reuters/Jim Young photo credit


freeacre

I have recovered from my flash of temper over the stupid Santorum/Limbaugh tirades condemning the inclusion of contraceptive medication in the government's health care insurance coverage plan. What a pant load.

Another annoyance is the seemingly endless intrusion of "celebrity news" that assaults us at almost every turn. The right hand columns of so many digital pages are filled with vulgar and mindless headlines about Miley Siruses underpants or JaLo's nipples or some one-named "personality's" fashion faux pas, or some other bone-head titillation or other. Like the torturous blaring of rock 'n roll to prisoners, I suppose its intent is to distract the public and divert our attention from anything that is real. It also continually sabotages any accompanying story that covers any thoughtful articles about women or feminine issues, reducing us over and over to a version of tits and ass. So much for the Women's Movement and "sexual revolution." Bimbos in the Military. Bimbos in Business. Bimbos in the News. We've come a long way, Baby! Yeah, right.

But, I digress. March 2 has come and gone. I have to admit that I have been more than a little anxious during this period of predictive disaster. Clif High wrote that we have only 26 days to live and that some huge event would happen that we have never seen TV anchors talk about before. Something Big that releases emotions which don't go away. Maybe nuclear war. Maybe a Kill Shot from the Sun that kills millions and leaves the rest without electricity for the foreseeable future - something on that order. To be fair, the time period in question still has five days to go. http://thecelestialconvergence.blogspot.com/2012/02/pole-shift-magnetic-pole-reversal.html.

Meanwhile, the stock market finally rose to 13,000, the President's birth certificate continues to be an issue, the cretin Limbaugh is in hot water, and the circle-jerk Republican primaries stagger on. But, what about those super cells that unleashed multiple tornadoes on the 2nd and 3rd of March- with more on the way? See: http://global.christianpost.com/news/tornado-watch-authorities-pinpoint-very-large-supercell-causing-destruction-70760/. Or take a look at the current earthquake activity map: http://quakes.globalincidentmap.com/. Or, the active volcanoes: http://www.volcano.si.edu/reports/usgs/index.cfm?content=worldmap.
As noted by Jerry Lee Lewis, "There's a whole lot of shakin' going on."

This heightened activity of super storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes might, in fact, be consequences of the increased solar flares and coronal mass ejections. The increased activity of the Sun might be due to Patrick Geryl's theory that as the Sun spins, the difference in the winding up of tension between the smaller polar regions and larger equatorial areas, creates a torque of energy that is periodically released. This massive energy bombardment heats the core of the earth, destabilizing the magnetic poles and possibly even the continents, This would lead to sudden massive changes to the weather, volcanoes going off, earthquakes, floods, etc. Major world-wide catastrophes. See Geryl's work: http://www.halfpasthuman.com/RadioSpecial.html.

Or, perhaps the changes in the Sun's activity are due to the approach of Nibiru, Planet X, or Sirius, with whom our Sun may be in a bi-nary relationship. Our astro-archeoloist friend, Ed, came over last night. He was telling us about the shafts in the Great Pyramid which point to differing points in the sky. One points continuously to Sirius. The rest change according to the procession of the Equinoxes. As the eons go by, the whole thing becomes a time piece which points to a time when the Earth and Sirius come close to each other again. That would probably include visits from long-lost "gods" and demi-gods - alien beings from Orion's Belt upon which most of the most ancient stone artifacts were constructed to represent.

I guess it is some form of cold comfort to realize that no matter how much of a clusterfuck is created by the politicians and financiers if the world, the Earth and our Solar System are more than capable of slapping down whatever plans they have with one (or several) natural disasters. So, stay tuned. Hopefully, answers to our questions are coming soon. Keep the car filled with gas is case you need to make a run for it. We were, I think, privileged to be born into this amazing tumultuous period of time. We might want to cultivate a sense of grace and gratitude to go with it.