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

THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF EVIL

First some pics of gardens and produce

Rockpicker and Oldensoul garden in Montana

Stone planter by Rockpicker

Freeacre's latest, Orange zest wheat bread

Our latest garden produce, onions and carrots


Thoughts on the Nature of Evil

This is a guest post kindly sent to us from Belgium (abridged due to length, but e-mail us and we could send you the entire essay as an e-mail attachment)

From Belgium

I have had some problems writing this piece because even after researching the internet, I still do not know where the answer lies and therefore offer it up as a discussion document with some initial meanderings to point your thoughts along the lines that I have traveled. You may have an entirely different response which I consider all to the good since such discussions will only put flesh on the bones of this effort.

There are two initial thoughts which occur to me, the first is a question regarding its nature. Is it a tangible concept say like friendship or is it more amorphous say like hope? Whatever it is, its manifestation is subjective in that my worst example may be trumped by your worst example so that its true extent may be only guessed at.

Wikipedia regards views on the nature of evil to fall into one of four
opposed camps:

Moral absolutism holds that good and evil are fixed concepts
established by a deity or deities, nature, morality, common sense, or some other source.

Amoralism claims that good and evil are meaningless, as there are no deities, no moral ingredient in nature.

Moral relativism holds that standards of good and evil are only products of local culture, custom, or prejudice.

Moral universalism is the attempt to find a compromise between the absolutist sense of morality, and the relativist view; universalism claims that morality is only flexible to a degree, and that what is truly good or evil can be determined by examining what is commonly considered to be evil amongst all humans.

Author and moral philosopher Sam Harris notes that universal morality
can be understood using measurable (i.e. quantifiable) metrics of happiness and suffering, both physical and mental, rooted in how the biology of the brain processes stimuli.

A more practical view states that all human life is sacred and any attempt to end another’s life deliberately is evil. In the interests of space I am going to leave the subject of euthanasia out of this discussion entirely. Any attempt to make another believe his life may be ended prematurely by torture is also evil as is torture of the mind as opposed to the body.
I am not going to choose one of these above the others but dip into them freely and to see where that takes us.

Hannah Aret wrote a book titled The Banality of Evil. This centered on the trial of Adolph Eichmann, which happened to take place in Jerusalem. She argued that rather than being a crazy fanatic (would probably now be called a fascist fundamentalist) he was an ordinary bureaucrat who accepted his place in the hierarchy and just got on with his job, which by chance happened to be the running of the death camps. For him it was clear that the heads of state set the policy; his roll was to implement it. Eichmann was trapped by having access to the ears of the true decision makers whilst being above the rank and file myriad bureaucrats who were just doing a job of work for the government. The banality comes from the fact that evil intent can be passed off down an organization by making it so routine it is never questioned.

There are a number of techniques for engaging the public in morally questionable acts. One is to split the work on a project between a number of locations as is common in the automotive industry for instance and distance the component plants from the assembly plant so the connection is not at the forefront of peoples minds. Another is to make the work production line mind numbing so people think “Anything this boring can’t be evil”.

Dual functional components are a way of sanitizing the product. A trip switch used in a missile may also be used in a domestic central heating installation for instance. Yet another is to wrap the project up in jargon so that WMD become as benign as SUV, sure they both kill people now and again but that is not their real purpose.

In the 1960’s MIT’s head of research argued that their concern was the development of technology, not its use. Making more adhesive longer burning napalm was just another interesting problem to be solved during the working day. That it gave innocent villagers an ugly death was not their concern as it was not the concern of the air crew who, distanced from the killing could also take a detached view.

The largest employer in the town where Columbine High School massacre took place is Lockheed Martin. When Michael Moore asked one of the directors the obvious question of isn’t what their company doing just the same as what the rogue kids had done only on a bigger scale, his reply was “No. The missiles which their company made were for the defense of the USA on American soil and not for offense against second or third states”. Of course not and history doesn’t bear it out either.

Sometimes people are head hunted for certain positions where they will be culpable in the continuance or development of some aspect of evil. Overt flattery is a way of bringing them on board by describing exciting aspects of the work and saying that the applicant could do this. It is very difficult technique to resist. Here is one person who did just this from the film Good Will Hunting. For those not familiar with the film Will is a janitor in a University until it is discovered that he is a mathematical genius able to solve problems that tie the professors up in knots. He is sent for a job with the NSA where he is interviewed by its head. After some initial sparing Will is asked why he shouldn’t want to join the NSA. Here is his answer:

Will: “Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll give it a shot. Say I’m working at N.S.A. somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ‘cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed. Now the politicians are saying’, “Send in the marines to secure the area” ‘cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, getting’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number was called, ‘cause they were pulling’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some guy from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the
ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ‘cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally
they’re takin’ their sweet time bringing’ the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ‘til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the job interviews, which sucks ‘cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ‘cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.”

9/11 is too big a subject to get bogged down in here except to make a brief comment on Iraq. Whether Iraq was the reason behind 9/11 or was a reprisal for it, this country was chosen as a target when the CIA knew it had no connection with the events of that day. In fact since they invented Al Qaeda they knew from the beginning there was no connection. So why did the USA decide to kill tens of thousands of innocents in a country halfway around the world? There are two answers to this; the first is because they could (they had done it before and they knew they could do it again) and the second reason is because they deserved it. Saddam for good or bad had not unrolled his prayer mat and genuflected before the American God. It should be noted that both of these answers are good ones. Former friend had angered those who matter and life was forfeited as hubris won the day.


Sometimes the Universal Soldier can have ethical reservations over his or her allotted task. It takes more courage to make a stand and say no than to simply accept your lot and go with the flow. One such was Ehren Watada, an officer in the Stryker Brigade who refused to go with his group to Iraq. To combat foreseen accusations of cowardice his mother sent this open letter to explain her son’s actions.

“I am the mother of Lt. Ehren Watada, an officer stationed at Ft. Lewis. He is part of a Stryker brigade unit that deployed today to Iraq. Despite an unflinching commitment to his men and to democratic ideals, he chose not to accompany his men. His decision came through much soul-searching and through research and consultation with experts Dear Fellow Americans, across disciplines, inside and outside of the military and the government. After weighing the evidence, he came to the conclusion that he could no longer be silent while atrocities were committed in the name of democracy. He could no longer be a tool of an administration that used deception and lies to make the case for pre-emptive war. As a member of the armed forces, sworn to uphold the US Constitution, he refuses to blindly participate in a war of aggression, an illegal war that undermines who we are as a nation and violates international law. Implicit in his oath as an officer is the duty to disobey all unlawful orders for to carry out these orders renders him an accomplice to a criminal act. Furthermore, to order his men to participate in a war of aggression multiplies his guilt a thousand fold. His conscience will not permit him to do so. He believes that he can best serve them by taking a stand against the war. In so doing, he demonstrates that one does not relinquish the freedom to choose what is right, even in the military, and that the freedom to choose what is right transcends the allegiance to man and institutions.”

I think this just about puts good and evil in their respective positions.

Here is a story of someone who went with the flow and then regretted it afterwards. Even though as a result of his decision he was able to save many lives which would otherwise not have been the case. He regards himself personally responsible for “Loosing the World”. He was a chemical engineer and his story is related by Jacob Hornberger. His story relates to the general culpability theme but this time on a more conscious level. In 1935 Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist Movement was establishing its power and in order to unify the nation under one leadership, they wanted all citizens to take an oath of allegiance to the new party. Some like the engineer disagreed with the fundamental aspirations of the party and initially refused to sign. He later reconsidered and then regretted it for the rest of his life. Even though as a result of signing he later was able to save maybe 1000 lives he still thinks that if he and others like him had refused to sign then he could have saved all Eichmann’s victims plus the causalities of war. Because he accepted the lesser evil he fell victim to the greater evil. If in future times the American people are asked to sign an oath of allegiance to the American administration or the European citizens to the European Union how will we choose because there is no middle way with a Sophie’s choice?

”People often exhibit a visceral rejection of comparisons of our dire predicament to the rise of Nazi Germany.” Have you noticed how many Americans get upset over the comparisons that are increasingly being made between the United States and National socialist Germany? After all, it’s not as though we’re living in a police state, right? Well, if U.S. officials could somehow assure us that the U.S. government’s treatment of accused terrorists isn’t moving in the same direction in which Nazi Germany treated accused traitors, maybe that would help to put those comparisons to rest.

So, take the time to be sure to understand the momentous nature of the battle. Speak out about it, wherever and as often as you can. Make clear to everyone you know what is at stake, and convince them to fight, too.

For the present, we have the certainty of the Military Commissions Act—and the hope that we may still prevent its most ghastly eventualities. I pray that hope will be realized. The most terrible and terrifying thing of all, for those of you who will still be alive in forty or fifty years, will be to look back on this time, and to have to say, “Thus the world was lost”—and to know that, because you did not do everything you could, you helped to lose it.”

These discussions although centered on America do not except those on the other side of the pond. The EU as it is now known (haven’t we come a long way from the Common Market) first had Maastricht and now Lisbon as a way of trading freedom for security.

Incidentally it has been shown historically that the only purpose of torture is torture and it rarely if ever has any effective results. What about the ticking bomb scenario, is usually the next question? A nuke is set to explode somewhere in mainland USA within three hours and the only way to find its location is to torture the information out of someone. Is this not justified? Former President Clinton, ever one for an eye to a good public image, has rediscovered the judiciary as a way of passing the buck and has suggested the introduction of torture warrants in the same way as there used to be wire tap warrants (remember those).

The essential question we are coming around to is this, is it in a natural part of human nature to commit atrocities? The answer seems to be divided between those who would and those who would not. The biggest obstacle to overcome amongst military draftees is their resistance to kill another of their own species.

It was reported than in many instances, soldiers in the trenches during WW l never fired their weapon even when charged at. On the other side, in groups they seem to adopt a heard mentality especially when there is some personal gain to be had. To pick a few at random throughout history there were the Crusaders; the Conquistadors and the US soldiers who slaughtered the indigenous American peoples. Here the gains were souls; gold and land. Although these reasons are not excusable there was an identifiable end result but what about the early colonists who would shoot up an Aborigine village or an African village from the air for a bit of Saturday afternoon sport. There is obviously a level of superior/inferior mentality here but would any of these people consider themselves to be evil; probably not - would others judge them to be evil; probably? In some societies such people would not be punished for their acts but would be regarded as being out of balance and would be helped to have their complete being restored in balance. Are such attitudes wussy or enlightened? The difference in attitudes seems to be one of conscience.

Macbeth was a Scottish warrior with an impeccable record in battle but his down coming was an evil wife who had designs on becoming the power behind the throne. According to Scottish custom at that time succession could be passed down the family line but could also be awarded by the Royal Court to a person deemed to be a natural leader. Macbeth was a strong contender but this was not good enough for his wife who persuaded him to kill King Duncan and claim the crown. Eventually he was overcome with remorse and finished up going to pieces.

So the answer to the question of whether ordinary people can be made to act in an evil way appears to be yes, although we should not forget the soldiers in the trenches who would not shoot at the enemy.

Finally we come to two thorny questions: is it evil for one person or group to own another persons body and is it evil for one person or group to own another persons mind? Slavery has been with us for thousands of years and as such may be regarded as Custom and Practice. It is only in the last 150 – 200 years that it has become to be regarded as evil and only for the last forty or so years that former slaves had equal civil rights to other races in the USA. Certainly so far as the slaves were concerned, it was not a good deal to have their freedom taken away, although others would argue to the contrary. In order to provide good work for their owners the slaves had to be well housed, well fed and kept in better health than might otherwise be the case in order for the owner to protect his investment.

Some groups of Christians may not agree that former slaves and their families should be accorded any civil rights at all. We all know that the only time Jesus lost his temper was with the money changers at the Temple and even though slavery was rife at the time in the countries he traveled, he never spoke out against it once. God’s beloved Abraham, the Bible leads us to believe, with his wife’s permission, impregnated one of her slaves named Hagar. As time went by Hagar became insolent and as a result was severely beaten. When the opportunity presented itself she ran away but then met the angel of God on the road. Instead of guiding her towards her original land of Egypt, the angel advised her to “Return to thy mistress and submit thyself under her hand.”

Saint Peter devotes a whole chapter in his testament in the defense of slavery. He exhorts slaves to be “subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the forward (tough and cruel)”. Peter also tells slaves “when you do well and suffer for it, yet take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” If Peter was hard on slaves, Paul was worse. In addition to making obligatory calls for obedience “With fear and trembling”, Paul went so far as to return a runaway slave to his master.

According to Samuel Francis who wrote in a 1998 edition of the magazine
Southern Partisan, “Neither Jesus nor the apostles nor the early church condemned slavery, despite countless opportunities to do so and there is no indication that slavery is contrary to Christian ethics or that any serious theologian before modern times ever thought it was.”

So there we have it. The keeper of the Universe’s moral code reckons that owning another person’s body is right on with him, at least so far as his representatives can be relied on. It also follows from this that the God of universal love and mercy also has sympathies with the Klan. I sometimes wonder that if the Christian God has such obvious double standards why the PTB want to abandon him in favor of Lucifer. Still, that is not my concern.

Zombies and people on life support can exist without a mind but so far as I know, without going into the realms of the paranormal, a functioning mind cannot exist independent of a body to house it. If owning another’s body is morally acceptable then owning another’s mind must also be acceptable by the same token. This argument gives the moral green light to projects such as MKUltra. (The details of which can be had by e-mailing for the unabridged copy of this post.)

Susan’s story is evil by any standards but not according to theologians.

Let us recap on a few logical conclusions here.

We are told in the Bible by the representatives of God that he (or she) does not have a problem with slavery. If it is acceptable for one person or group to own another’s body then it must also be acceptable to own another’s mind since the two are not separable. It is then honorable or, at least, not dishonorable to take another’s mind away from them and replace it with a creation of your own for your own purposes. The problem here is that if the 300 or so people that represent the 12 bloodline families that control the world take the rest of the world’s citizenry into slavery, including the whole of Christendom, this then gets a pass from God but these families are supposedly representatives of Lucifer so God is on a hiding into nothing. Unless, that is, you take the Book of Revelations as an accurate document.

Notwithstanding any of this, evil exists but it one of those words or concepts which defy a dictionary definition and can only be understood by way of examples about which you must make up your OWN mind.

Sources
The Banality of Evil
http://musictravel.free.fr/political/political65.htm
Wikipedia – Evil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil
Good Will Hunting – NSA Speech
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=189834
The Terrorist – OPEC Meeting Attack
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0841179/usercomments
Vietnam War was Lost – The Quiet Mutiny Documentary by John Pilger
http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=255
Ehren Watada – The soldier who refused a tour in Iraq
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/June/27%20o/A%20letter%20from%20Carolyn%20Ho,%20Mother%20of%20Ehren%20Watada%20Who%20Refuse%20to%20Fight%20in%20Iraq.htm
Universal Soldier Song Lyrics
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/sainte_marie_buffy/universal_soldier.html
Jacob Hornberger – Thus the World was Lost – Arthur Silber
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/09/thus-world-was-lost.html
The Ticking Bomb Scenario to Justify Torture – Arthur Silber
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/10/lies-in-service-of-evil.html
The Stanford Prison Experiment
http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/09/our-dark-hearts-stanford-prison.php
Slavery Condoned in Bible
Derek Jensen – The Culture of Make Believe pp 54 – 57
Mind Control – Bryce Taylor / Susan Ford – Thanks for the Memories
e-book download
http://www.box.net/shared/dx8i272e88

TIME TO MAN UP

from Freeacre

First, some photos of our simulated post collapse gustatory chemistry.

Homemade pizza with spinach and artichokes.


One of our garden salads


Some garden produce. Two kinds of carrots, a fennel root, white onion, and wax beans


Time to Man Up

As many of you know, Murph and I disconnected from the satellite TV a couple of years ago and now we just watch PBS and the local news with an antenna and order a bunch of movies from Netflix to watch in the evenings. We read and we blog in our time off from gardening, going to meetings, and preparing food, but we do watch a lot of movies. And, since we can, we often will get on some sort of tear and decide to watch All of the Quinton Tarantino Movies, for instance. Then, we’ll learn that his “Kill Bill” movies were based on his watching “The Lonewolf” series of Shogun Assassin movies and also the “Lady Snowblood” series of vengeance. So, we have watched all of those as well.

Not all the movies we watch are violent. We recently watched “Princess Bride” again. We love to watch “Secondhand Lion” over and over. We watch documentaries and quirky movies like “Lars and the Real Girl” or “Special.” But, many of the movies we watch depict characters who make a stand and fight for it or fight for their family or friends, like Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino” or Bruce Willis in “Live Free or Die Hard.”

Last night we watched the third in a series of movies all based on the historic battle fought between the Spartans and Persians in the formative days of the Greek nation. The heroic King of Sparta, Leonidis, held off a force estimated to be between 300,000 and a million Persians with only 300 men at the pass of Thermopylae to protect his homeland. The 300 did die, but Greece was inspired by their heroism to unite as one country, and the Persians were demoralized and did not return to Europe. And, the battle was never forgotten. Tom Cruise refers to it in “The Last Samarai,” in fact, when he leads the fight against the evil arms dealers of the West and fights with the Samurai to the last man.

So, what is my point here? Is this a post on the history of film or something? No. It’s about gearing up for the struggle against those forces that have been kicking our collective ass. I understand that we need to balance our feminine and masculine sides of our natures. I think this forum, in fact, encourages the powerful love and nurturing that the feminine provides. I am devoted to Our Mother, the Earth. I turn toward the feminine face of God.

But, Buddies, it’s time to “Man Up.” Get a grip. Get balanced. And, this is coming from me, freeacre – the feminine part of the partnership of murph and freeacre. These movies help me to access my inner Klingon – the masculine side. Because we need it against the goon squads and shitstorm that is in front of us. Without it, we are going to get rolled and smoked like a Cuban cigar.

I’ll be watching with interest the speech that Pres. Obama gives this evening to the despicable congressional sell-outs regarding health care. I imagine that he is going to sound reasonable and in touch with people’s needs. He will be articulate and sympathetic and knowledgeable. And, afterward, the Republican goons like Limbaugh and Beck will stomp in and tear him to shreds. They’ll try to burn him like they did Jimmy Carter after his speech on oil depletion. They’ll say it’s not the “American Way” to think in terms of oil depletion – or real health care for all either. I’m not 100% in favor of the Democratic plan for health care. But, it is a good start, considering what factions Obama has to contend with. If we can get something going, it can be evaluated and tweaked later on as we see what works and what doesn’t. Any system can work if the people involved are truly motivated by an honest intention to help the citizenry. And, any system can and will be sabotaged if those in power are greedy bastards with no consequences for their misdeeds.

But, right now, It doesn’t matter whether the plan is good or not. They don’t care. They’d kick in his head or drag him behind a pick-up truck or lynch him if they could. Just because they are mean, spiteful, racist sons-of-bitches, who happen to also be bought off by Big Money. And, as George Carlin (God Rest His Soul) so aptly observed: “They don’t give a fuck about you!”. Even if Obama does, most of them (including the democrats) don’t. And, the bad side seems to have a lock in the balls department.

We have a collection of DVD’s on Peak Oil, financial collapse, and other anarchist or anti-war protest films, for instance. All of them present a very rational, well-thought out argument for organizing to make the changes necessary to survive the collapse of the civilization based on cheap oil. Or, they show the protests held in the Northern California rain forests to protect the Old Growth forests. They depict hand-cuffed college aged girls on their knees before cops. The cops then hold their eyelids open and spray them with mace, torturing them as punishment for their non-compliance to the logging industry.

Has this made anyone want to go out and join the struggle against the Evil Empire? Uh, no. Not that I have seen, anyway. Something is missing.

I remember one time while we still lived in Tahoe. Murph and I went to see “Signs,” the M. Night Shyamalian film about aliens who come down to take over the planet, produce crop circles, and raise havoc for awhile. We thought it was quite exciting. Our housemate, Steve, though, thought it was comical. Steve, a dear friend, is a white ghetto rat from Detroit.

“Boy, it’s a good thing those aliens didn’t land in Detroit, “he chortled after the movie. “My homeboys woulda had their ride stripped five minutes after they went around the corner. And, if they gave us any shit, we’d a put a cap in their ass.” Attitude. Balls – that’s what is missing.

I’ll tell you what, if that were my son or daughter maced while kneeling and handcuffed or my 74 year old mother tased by a highway patrol officer for not getting her license out fast enough – there would be hell to pay. Those motherfuckers should be maced or tased BACK. And their parents should be shunned for raising such a beast. And, their wife should be treated the same way for feeding and sleeping with the pig. (Their kids, however, should be left alone to lead lives that could possibly redeem the family.) I’m fat and I am old. But, if it took my last breath, I’d make those miscreants lives a living hell if that shit was done to my mom or kids. You aren’t going to turn them around by enrolling them in an anger management class. And, you aren’t going to re-direct congressmen with educational seminars on the issues. It’s going to take a dog fight.

I am all for peaceful organizing, cooperation, community, and all that. But, maybe it’s because we haven’t drunk any fluoridated water in five years. Or, maybe it’s because I’ve watched “Braveheart,” “The Postman,” “The Matrix,” “V for Vendetta,” and the “Terminator” series multiple times – but there is a point when we need to “man up”, fight for what we believe in, and protect each others back.. We need to figure out for ourselves where to draw the line on how much we are willing to put up with. Rather than denying our anger, we need to use it to protect ourselves and our communities. Martin Luther King said that unless one finds something he is willing to die for, he has never really lived.

Let’s face it, we are all going to die. But, how is it going to be? Fear-filled and miserable, exhausted, confident, satisfied, grateful or what? And, how do we live? Intimidated, herded like animals, bought and sold, or free, strong, and courageous.

It is looking like the “hard rain” is about to fall. We gotta get tougher if we are going to get through it with a shred of self-respect, honor, or sense of our place in history. I’m not advocating futile gestures of armed resistance that will only end up being an excuse for additional tyranny. We have to fight with our heads, first, as was taught in “Braveheart.” Money is the only vote that counts anymore. And, money can be a powerful determinant in the struggle to be taken seriously. That is why we advocate being very conscious of where every dollar goes. If you don’t like the lamestream media, don’t pay for it. If you are appalled by Frankenfood and the atrocities of Agrabusiness – don’t buy into it. If you don’t like the resource wars – use as little of them as possible. If you despise the financial overlords – cancel your credit cards (or pay them off each month so you pay no fees) and don’t invest in the rancid stock market (that means no 401K). Resist, resist, resist! Be united and coordinated like the Spartan phalanxes – each covering the other with their shields and swords. Our modern equivalent might be offering a spare room and food to someone who will help to defend the perimeter, or helping to ensure that a full-time activist gets enough to eat. Whatever it takes. It’s going to be a monumental task to dismantle the corporate class war machine. Our idealism and hope and empathy for each other is going to need to be balanced and strengthened by our discipline, commitment, and willingness to sacrifice for the greater good of our children and our planet.

On the domestic tranquility front – here is a picture of Brie surrounded by a bunch of young chickens playing and trying to get a rise out of her.

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

from Freeacre

Before I get on with my rambling thoughts, here are a few pictures of the projects we’ve been working on lately…

Tiny frog in a squash blossom looking for a meal to come in.

Ingredients for jerky

Glazed beets and carrots, fresh bread and tabuli salad


freeacre

Normally, I try to write a post from some sort of sense of clarity. But, when the comments begin to go beyond 60, and clarity still doesn’t happen on any topic, I just feel compelled to write something anyway. So, this is what’s been on my mind lately… questions, not answers.

Just where in the hell is the anti-war movement in this country?

How come Cryptogon can quote this article written by Glen Greenwald and taken from salon.com, and people aren’t in the streets, shutting down traffic in front of recruiting stations:

“The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemned as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies (”torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .”) — reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives….”

When you read additional sources that give details on prisoners kept in shit-filled diapers for three days at a time, fathers threatened with being forced to watch while their young son’s testicles were being crushed, women prisoners begging their male counterparts to kill them to put them out of their misery, anal rape, despicable humiliations of all kinds to people who may have only been guilty of being in Iraq or Afghanistan and standing on the wrong corner, one wonders just what sort of monstrous people Americans have become. Finally, Attorney General Holder seems like he will be looking into at least some of these atrocities. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is contemplating running the man probably most responsible for the culture of torture, Dick Chaney, for President in 2012. Un-fucking-believable. If he were to win, we’d deserve that asteroid hit.

This is worse than Vietnam. Worse than Mei Lai. Condoned by the top echelon of the government on a people who didn’t even do anything to us. The 911 perps (if they even were perps) were all from Saudi Arabia, not Iraq or Afghanistan, after all. And, even if they weren’t … so what? Is this what we do?

What I find ironic is that every day, I get 3 or 4 e-mails from practically ecstatic Christian neighbors who let me know how filled with love they are, and what a difference their religion makes in their lives. Oh, how the angels are with them at every moment. Oh, what a comfort it is to know that they are all loved and cherished and assured a comfy place next to Jesus in heaven when they die. It just seems OK to them, I guess, that none of this celestial host seems to be whispering a word about the fact that they should be standing up for their fellow man and working to end the wars, the torture, and the profiteers. Where in the fuck is the Council of Churches? The ACLU is the only one doing anything. And, they are thought of as Godless communist Jewboys by the faux-news-reading- knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers.

Oh, shit, there I go again. Name calling and stereo-typing these miscreants as I read about the Mayan prophecies and how we are on the verge of a wonderful transition in consciousness. All we have to do is cultivate a sense of unity and unconditional love toward our fellow humans, and we will all transform into something wonderful. Which leads me to my second question:

What if aliens really exist and the world as we know it is really going to end?

I gotta admit that I’ve always been inspired by science fiction and visions of Star Trek and their world no longer based on the profit motive. Or the Star Wars movies and their idea of The Force that binds together the Universe. The amazing works of indigenous peoples from the Hopis to the Mayans and the Maoris, Sumerians, and the aborigines who say that they hearken from star stuff, and say that our real home is in outer space or the fourth dimension. But, now that even NASA scientists are telling us that our planet is approaching the plane of the galactic center (“Hanab Ku” to the Mayans), and measurable waves of energy are washing over us emanating from it, the tangible reality is starting to set in. The magnetosphere is wildly fluctuating, the pole shift might actually be in process. As our galaxy bobs up into the plane of the center, our chances of getting hit with a bunch of big rocks or the Planet X go way up. It wouldn’t be the first time. (see http://projectavalon.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8441 )

On the one hand, I’d like to see Tim Geithner, Ben Bernake, the entire staff of Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, and Dick Chaney put in stocks and set out on Wall St. as targets for rotten vegetables before they get frog-marched to prison. Then, I’d move on to the executives and scientists at Monsanto Corp., creators of the Frankenfood that is poisoning us, Big Pharma, and the Council of Foreign Relations. And, that’s just for openers. I’m not even going to go into the Health Care fiasco.

But, then I remember a line from “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” “You can be mad as hell and rail against everything, but in the end, you have to let it all go” (or words to that effect). Maybe it’s a case of working out the timing. I want to react in real time with real emotions and all I can bring to the table to the outrageous insults to our humanity while I am here and functioning. But, at the same time, I want to be cultivating a sense of wonder as to What Else Is Out There.

I don’t want my reality to be confined or defined by what suits the corporations and the overlords. I am sure that they would love us all to feel like powerless pawns on a chessboard that they own. It is great for them if the best thing that we can imagine is a trip to Disneyland and all we can feel is impotent anger
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Maybe instead, I’ll start to imagine that we ARE all star stuff. . . that they, too, are changing frequency and are unable to continue to be the miserable scumbags that they have been. I’ll imagine that they won’t be able to lie anymore. I’ll imagine that employees will walk away from factories making pain rays and depleted uranium anti-personnel weaponry. I’ll imagine that people come to their senses and stop doing jobs and making decisions that ruin people’s lives and make us sick. What if the opening bell in the stock market stopped ringing because nobody showed up to ring it? Maybe I’ll open the door of my mind that has been closed to accepting that alien beings really do exist, and that some of them might actually be attempting to help at least some us survive the cataclysm that is to come.

I refuse to believe that this twisted, sick and wrong culture of crap is the best we can come up with. Nope – unacceptable. I’m going to make a peach streusel and contemplate a better world.
peach streusel, oh yummmm