Imperial Twilight

Pulling Feminism's Claws

2011-10-11T03:57:00.000-07:00

Vox Day once defined feminism as the use of state power by women to force men into a position of social inferiority. We should therefore expect feminism to wane as the global depression reduces the funding of Western governments and hence their power. The process is about to begin in Topeka, KS:

Cash-Strapped Topeka May Stop Prosecuting Domestic Violence

To the average reader, that headline probably conjures an image of an innocent wife repeatedly battered by a thuggish husband but unable to summon the police. To anyone who knows the reality of the American legal system, it also suggests that a treacherous wife won't be able to use VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) to maliciously dispossess her husband of his home and children.

Feminism without the threat of state violence is a cat without claws. To use a different metaphor, the collapse of the government spending bubble (defunding the divorce lawyers and "family" courts) will lead inexorably to the implosion of what The Futurist aptly calls the Misandry Bubble.

Update

Not every man is willing to wait until the cat is declawed. Vox Day cites a recent, terrible instance of an ex-husband who decided to overrule the family court judge.

Surviving Prison in America

2011-10-08T19:15:00.000-07:00

MarkyMark at the MGTOW Survival Guide has posted an article by a convict, James D. Anderson, describing present day conditions in America's prisons and explaining how to survive them. It is not pleasant reading, but Anderson states that penitentiary life is not as spectacularly brutal as Hollywood makes it out to be. The convict's objective should be to get out with his dignity and sanity intact:

Dealing With the Unthinkable

The specific context is wrongful conviction on a sex crime charge, but Anderson's advice is broadly applicable to the entire prison experience.

Setting Up Christian Men (and Women) for a Fall

2011-10-02T17:05:00.001-07:00

Or, how to teach your daughter to be an entitlement princess while preparing your son to become an alimony/child support serf. Advice like this gets young Christian guys slaughtered in the dating market and the divorce courts. It is a textbook example of the feminism that permeates most churches in America, though I have little doubt that it was written by someone who considers himself/herself a social conservative. My analysis:

The first line (We need to teach our DAUGHTERS) implies female headship, that women should get first consideration and that their desires and needs, not God's Word, must set the moral standard for relations between the sexes. Having laid a bad spiritual foundation, the author proceeds to build upon it a tottering structure of feminist demands and traditionalist humbug. The laughable thing is that the following points are meant to dissuade your daughter from getting herself "pumped and dumped" by a succession of Alpha male players, and motivate her to settle down with a compliant, nice guy, Delta provider.

1. "The difference between a man who flatters her and a man who compliments her."

The daughter is presented with a choice between flattery and compliments. Not only does this stroke her little ego, it leaves her wide open to the real sexual temptation she faces. Women are instinctively attracted to male dominance, not male supplication. She is more likely to chase the bad boy Alpha who ignores or rebuffs her than the sweet Delta who approaches with the proverbial candy and flowers.

2. "A man who spends money on her and a man who invests in her."

Here the budding princess is advised that men owe her money and presents, with the apparent proviso that these are given with what she deems to be the right intent. Again, any Alpha worth his salt can bed a woman without spending a dime on her. The idea that women have to be cunningly flattered (see above) or bribed into fornication is a Victorian myth. Nor does the foolishness stop there. We are sliding into a horrifying global depression where plenty of decent guys - good husband material - will be employed at pitiful wages, if they can find work at all. No one should expect a woman to wed a destitute pauper (women marry primarily for security, after all), but now is the time for parents to tell their daughters to scale down their material expectations, not keep them high.

3. "A man who views her as property and a man who views her properly."

This one is problematic at best. Girls definitely should be taught to avoid men who are jealous and domineering, for that way lies heartache and probably violence too. But in the eyes of feminists, any assertion of male headship is treating a woman as property. Given the feminist context, I believe the latter is the correct reading. Fairly bad advice for keeping a naive girl out of an Alpha's harem, because unless the Alpha is the possessive type, he'll have no problem letting her go. He has others to take her place.

4. "A man who lusts after her and a man who loves her."

Again, problematic at best. This is true if we define lust as the insistence on fornication, i.e., the guy wanting the girl to put out before marriage. This advice, if followed, is utterly wholesome and will definitely keep her off the Alpha carousel. Yet I've spent years in the evangelical subculture, and I've seen time and again how it tends to regard male sexual desire with an equal mixture of suspicion, ridicule, and disgust. Fact is, men marry primarily for regular sex (just as women marry primarily for financial security) and it's flat out ridiculous to present horniness and love as alternatives in that context. Don't believe me? Open your bible and read the Song of Solomon.

Pushing the lust/love false dichotomy might also suggest to women, when they do marry, a rationale for withholding sex from their husbands. After all, isn't he just supposed to "love" her? Lack of marital sex is a common complaint from husbands and ex-husbands in the Internet manosphere. It leads to bitterness, adultery, and divorce.

5. "He is God's gift to women and a man who remembers a woman was God's gift to man."

In other words, arrogant self-centeredness ("I am God's gift to the opposite sex") is impermissible for men but permissible for women. The irony of invoking Eve is so terrible that I cannot find even twisted humor in this. Eve rebelled against God, so it is beyond stupid for Christians to brag about her, as it would be for them to brag about Adam.

Probably the most painful lesson that "nice" Christian men are learning today, through rejection in the dating market and through divorce, is that women don't respect or desire men who put them on pedestals. Advising men to behave this way in dating and marriage isn't just wrong, it is cruel.

6. "And then teach our sons to be that kind of man."

If you believe points 1-5, don't bother. Your sons will get the exact same feminist indoctrination from the surrounding culture, sans the fraudulent religious trappings. On the other hand, if you can see the foolishness of these teachings and you really want help your sons, then send them here:

Alpha Game: Breaking the Chains, Winning the Games, and Saving Western Civilization

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

2010-12-03T05:08:00.000-08:00

LewRockwell.com has posted an interview with Doug Casey on Wikileaks.

Excerpt:

The whole idea of "national security" has gotten completely out of control. It has about zero to do with protecting what little is left of America; it's all about protecting, and building, the U.S. government, and the people who participate in it and profit from it. People fail to understand that the USG doesn't represent them, or care about them – or at least not any more than a farmer cares about his milk cows. It's an entity unto itself at this point. It has its own interests, which have only an accidental or coincidental overlap with those of America. Government is by its very nature duplicitous and predatory; it always puts itself first. By cynically paying lip service to traditional values, and whipping up a nationalistic, patriotic fervor, they can get Boobus americanus to go along with almost anything they propose. Just like Boobus north koreansis.

"National security" and "national interests" are nebulous phrases. In practice, they have come to mean the security and interests of the most powerful (and corrupt) factions in our government. So when the crimes and lies of these elites are publicly exposed, they naturally cry treason and demand the murder of those who've blown their cover. It is in this context that Samuel Johnson's famous observation is true: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Using Stored Grains

2010-11-24T20:13:00.000-08:00

If you are laying in a store of bulk food for lean times, here is a useful post on SuvivalBlog.com:

Using the Grain You Have Stored

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The End of Retirement

2010-11-22T06:22:00.000-08:00

The Greater Depression is forcing elderly Americans out of retirement. From WTSP in St. Petersburg, Florida:

Doug East and his wife, Bonnie, are both 78 years old and they decided together that the time was right to end their retirement and go back to work.
"It's a trying time right now and that's for all people, particularly in the older age," said Doug East, who retired after owning a real estate business for over fifty years.

Bonnie East says that, in this economy, it's all about survival. "Surviving is the most important thing right now, and it's been a real learning curve for us all."

The couple decided to open up the Attic, an antique and consignment shop located in the Gandy Shopping Center, to help make ends meet.

"It took us about three to four months just to get started and it was an immediate success," Doug East said.

The couple retired from the real estate business and had been living on their savings for the past six years, and then they realized their money was slowly running out and they decided to do something to reinvent themselves in this economy.

"Things were getting tight and we said, 'What are we going to do? Wait until we don't have anything left or get out there and supplement the little that we do have and let's build again." [Emphasis added]

The last paragraph neatly sums up the predicament of ordinary people living under a system of central banking, fractional reserves, monetary inflation, and speculative credit bubbles. Their earnings and savings, plundered by design, either vanish or become insufficient for survival.

Preparing for the Underground Church

2010-11-19T22:40:00.000-08:00

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand's booklet is more relevant than ever:
http://preparingfortheundergroundchurchbook.blogspot.com
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It's Time to Boycott the Airlines

2010-11-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

National No-fly Zone

We're not traveling by air anymore until the TSA removes the porno scanners and stops the groping.

Update

On second thought, that's not going far enough. We should boycott air travel until the TSA is eliminated.

Surviving the Cold When You Cannot Heat Your Home

2010-11-12T21:58:00.000-08:00

We may speak figuratively about the death of the American middle class, but in colder parts of the country death becomes a literal threat when families can no longer afford to heat their homes in winter. For these people, guarding against hypothermia will be a major safety concern.

Here is an article on Hypothermia Prevention. It focuses mainly on outdoor activity but some of it will be applicable to the home as well.

A more specific home survival article: How to Stay Warm At Home Without a Heater.

Why Voting in America Accomplishes So Little

2010-11-10T18:47:00.000-08:00

As the Tea Party is about to find out, electing new politicians to the imperial legislature does little or nothing to curb the power of the government. Isabel Paterson describes the problem succinctly:

"....political power has a ratchet action; it works only one way, to augment itself. A transfer occurs by which the power cannot be retracted, once it is bestowed. In the lowest illustration of this, a candidate for office may promise the voters that he will reduce taxes, or the number of offices, or the powers of office. But once he is elected, he can use the taxes, the office holders, or the powers to ensure re-election; therefore the motive of the promise is no longer operative. By cutting down expenditure or the number of officeholders or graft, he will certainly create enemies, so the reverse motive, impelling him to evade his promise, is doubled. The voter can only vote the incumbent out; but the next officeholder will come into those augmented powers, and be still harder to get rid of in turn. The difficulty of taking back powers once granted is illustrated in the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment; although it was demanded and carried by overwhelming sentiment of the citizens, the article of repeal contained a proviso which would retain numerous Federal jobs; it was impossible to make a clean sweep of the pernicious usurped power."

Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993 ) pp. 163-164

Karl Denninger, who believes the Tea Partiers were easily and quickly co-opted by the Republican Party, advises Americans to stop playing by the establishment's rules and begin massive, continual street protests:

You don't need a leader. You need balls. The proper question is when you will find them? If not now, when?

The Perfect Euphemism

2010-11-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

The Fed's inflationary debt monetizing policy is officially called Quantitative Easing. Considering that in King James Bible English the verb "to ease" means to defecate, this is the perfect euphemism for what they are doing to the dollar.

What is More Important Than Physical Survival?

2010-11-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this blog, and if you agree with me that the world (or at least a good part of it) is about to experience tremendous hardship and suffering, then you are probably taking measures to keep yourself and your loved ones safe during the turbulent times ahead. Considering the possibility of near-term severe inflation, it's a good idea to gather as much storable food and provisions as possible, now, before prices soar. But recognize that no matter how well supplied and securely situated you might be, that even if you manage to avoid starvation and violence, death will catch up with you one day. Make certain that you are ready for that day (click image below to enlarge) :

An Observant Briton Corrects an Ignoramus

2010-11-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

In the comments section of Las Vegas Tunnel People (Daily Mail, November 4), Mark from London responds to a fool who thinks we Americans are being under-taxed:

Quote: "This is what happens when you have low taxes.....".

The US does not have 'low taxes'. It's a myth.

I lived in Florida for many years: $8,000/year property tax. $12,000/yr health insurance. So, the first $20K earned (....AFTER deductions) doesn't even pay for a glass of water. And before anyone states that health insurance is not a tax, you're right. At those rates (and believe me that wasn't the best cover), it's State sanctioned extortion.

While their Federal income tax may be 25-28% for most people, once FICA, State tax, (and local taxes in some instances), annual property tax and the myriad of licenses, fees, levies etc. (all 'taxes' by any other name) is deducted, the rate is anything but low. You should see their phone bills. Some even include a 'war tax' - no kidding.

I think the term is nickle and dimed to death but the 'low tax" illusion still seems to be perpetuated.

And Mark isn't even taking inflation into account, nor the horrendous costs on production and barriers to capital formation imposed by bureaucratic regulations. All that crap is what's driving the insane medical care prices he complains about.

A Sign of America's Approaching Imperial Collapse

2010-11-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

Britain, evidently recognizing that America's days as a global power are numbered, is entering into a military alliance with her old rival across the Channel:

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) – Britain and France will launch a broad defense partnership on Tuesday that includes setting up a joint force and sharing equipment and nuclear missile research centers, a French government source said.
Treaties to be signed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron at a meeting in London will pave the way for an unprecedented degree of military cooperation between the two neighbors.

Quote of the Day

2010-11-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

Comment posted by Nate on the Vox Popoli blog:

"I suggest you all stop worrying about how to fix [America]... and start figuring out how you're going to survive it."

Citizens Are Learning to Protect Themselves

2010-11-01T09:32:00.000-07:00

In Detroit, a group calling itself the Detroit 300 is patrolling the streets. These people are so sick of the rampant crime in their neighborhood (including the robbery and rape of a 90 year old woman) that they've dispensed with the "no snitching" code that is common in underclass black communities and are helping police track down suspects. As local governments grow ever more feeble in the collapsing economy, and as the police fade away, I expect groups like this to evolve into outright vigilante squads.

How Widespread is the Fraud?

2010-10-28T05:18:00.000-07:00

"Richard" poses an unsettling question (posted 10/28/10 7:03 AM) in the comments section of the Vox Day blog:

We observe here a lack of integrity of most (perhaps all) of the institutions associated with real estate transactions. Our interest in this topic stems from our desire to protect ourselves/our family from the consequences of this dishonesty and maintain that which we earned.

Given the ubiquity of dishonesty observed, it raises another disturbing question that should also be addressed: Is the same thing going on in the securities industry that is went on in the real estate industry. Do the brokerage companies really have the stocks/securities that you 'bought?' I know for a fact that stock brokers really, really, don't like to have to give you physical possession of stock certificates since then it is registered in 'your' name rather than being held in a pool by them.

Deadbeats?

2010-10-26T05:32:00.000-07:00

Karl Denninger and Vox Day cheerfully hammer the bankster apologists, whose favorite refrain is that deadbeat borrowers are the real villains in the mortgage fraud scandal. It has come to light that employees at Ameriquest were conning borrowers into signing Adjustable Rate Mortgages when they thought they were signing for fixed rate loans.

Denninger writes:

People wonder why we can't find an original note, complete with the documentation? Why the original loan files "disappeared" - this, in a business, that historically has all been about paper, and which has studiously kept it around?

After all, you can walk into any office supply store in America and down one of the aisles you will find a product called BANKER'S BOXES. With good reason.

This is the part of the lending story that nobody wants to talk about. Wall Street securitized this paper, even though they knew they were securitizing trash. The original documents would prove the frauds - if they were ever produced in court.

And:

....how many of the so-called "deadbeats" are really beaten dead - by a financial system that rooked them and now has committed hundreds of thousands of felony counts of perjury to cover it up.

Another Snack for Moloch?

2010-10-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

I have an acquaintance, a sister in Christ, whose 9 year-old son has been tagged "ADD" by the public schools because he has trouble paying attention in class. The bureaucrats want to dope him. Worse, the boy's father agrees with them. The mother is protecting her son, studying with him at night, encouraging him to apply himself to his school work, and always urging him to put his trust in God. Her love and faith have been rewarded with one notable academic success: the boy scored a 100 on his latest history test. I pray that she continues to stand up for him. According to her, nobody else will. But I fear she is wavering, and that she'll eventually consent to the doping if pressure from the school and her family don't let up.

It's no small measure of America's decadence that parents are willing to drug their own children to ensure their submissiveness towards an evil system.

Show Us the Note!

2010-10-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

Good news from Kentucky, where another local government is standing up to the banks:

Kenton County, Kentucky, which has the third highest volume of foreclosures in the state, has enacted a general order impacting the filing of all foreclosure complaints in its courts.

Recent foreclosure paperwork errors at several major servicers nationwide prompted the move. Big lenders such as GMAC Mortgage, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase recently imposed suspensions to check their foreclosure case files for mistakes.

Kenton County’s order will have a wide ranging impact on mortgage servicing clients, including timelines relating to the filing of first legal action in Kenton County, with many other counties throughout the Commonwealth expected to follow suit.

The order requires all foreclosure complaints in Kenton County to be accompanied by an affidavit certifying that the plaintiff is the owner and holder of the note and mortgage and identifying the plaintiff as the original holder or an assignee, trustee, or successor in interest of the original holder.

Kenton County foreclosure complaints must also be accompanied by a copy of the note and recorded mortgage with copies of all allonges, endorsements, and assignments necessary to document the chain of title to both the note and the mortgage.

The "paperwork errors" and "mistakes" were deliberate acts of fraud, revealed when banks began foreclosing on houses they didn't legally own.

A Great Trifle

2010-10-22T08:21:00.001-07:00

In the German language there is an interesting expression, grosse Kleinigkeit, which may be translated as "a great trifle", a thing which is small and yet of tremendous importance. This phrase aptly describes the precious, formative experience of childhood play. Sadly, play is often denied to modern American children by parents who slothfully or ignorantly immerse them in electronic media or grimly enroll them in regimented group activities.

Laura Wood at The Thinking Housewife has devoted several posts to this topic, including a contribution by Lawrence Auster (a social critic of the first water). In Why Do Children Play?, Wood disputes the typical adult view that play is nothing more than a way to fill up empty time:

In truth, a child is more than an adult-in-waiting. Child’s play forms not just the developing person, but the world at large. The child plays because he is seeking to understand and to know. He wants to create something new. When a child plays, he is an actor in the drama of existence. He chooses. He decides. He loves. He thinks. He is free. Child’s play fertilizes all of society. It awakens adults from the slumber of rationality. For children, the spiritual dimension of existence, with both its good and its evil, is always close at hand. Imagination is the apprehension of the unseen. For a child, there is no gulf between the physical and the moral, the visible and the invisible. All reality is one. Things that are just things for us are filled with meaning.

That is why elaborate toys are a mistake for children. Elaborate toys, especially mechanical toys, deaden the imagination. The world as it is elicits a response from a child. He needs the time and freedom to act upon his inner life. Boredom is a natural and necessary part of play, a phase of exhaustion, rest and preparation. Contrived play suppresses a child’s awareness and stupefies him.

Play is not play when it is regimented, when it is enacted in large groups or impersonal settings. In an institutional setting, the playing child is like a seedling in a drumming downpour. His tender shoots are battered. He is over-stimulated, too busy and distracted to hear the barely audible voices of inspiration within. He may age, but he does not grow. He is prepared for lifelong stupefication.

For a child to play well, he must be loved. There is no play without love. To enable play is an exalted task, an awesome responsibility. The adult who supervises and nurtures the playing child, disciplining and loving him, is far more powerful than the world will ever admit. With balls and dolls, blocks and swords, civilization is forged.

"Things that are just things for us [adults] are filled with meaning." Absolutely. I can remember using my boyhood imagination to transform a ballpoint pen into a space rocket, or the backyard lawn into a battlefield for toy soldiers, or the indoor balcony overlooking the family room into a precipice at the edge of a yawning abyss (to be plumbed by a brave action figure lowered into the depths on a string). Nothing this side of heaven will ever match the freedom and fervent creativity of those early years, and without them I would have grown into a duller and shallower man than I am.

A Sheriff Stands Up to the Banksters

2010-10-21T05:14:00.000-07:00

As America slides towards economic and political disintegration, county sheriffs have the unenviable duty to maintain law while the fragile social order is attacked from above and below - from above by tyrannical Federal officials and their bankster allies, and from below by common criminals. In Illinois, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart takes a stand against the banksters:

Two of the largest U.S. mortgage servicers have said they will resume home foreclosures, but a big-city sheriff has news for them: he won't enforce their foreclosure evictions.

The sheriff for Cook County, Illinois, which includes the city of Chicago, said on Tuesday he will not enforce foreclosure evictions for Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase and Co. and GMAC Mortgage/Ally Financial until they prove those foreclosures were handled "properly and legally."

Bank of America, the largest U.S. mortgage servicer, and GMAC, on Monday both announced rollbacks from their foreclosure moratoriums.

The announcement by Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart comes after weeks of damaging accusations of shoddy paperwork that may have caused some people to be illegally evicted from their homes.

"I can't possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can't say for sure everything was done properly," Dart said in the statement.

"I need some kind of assurance that we aren't evicting families based on fraudulent behavior by the banks. Until that happens, I can't in good conscience keep carrying out evictions involving these banks," he added.

Lawlessness Begets Lawlessness

2010-10-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

Once Americans get it into their heads (and more of them do so every day) that we are ruled by criminals and that property rights have effectively vanished, they will learn to repay crime with crime. Karl Denninger comments on a case in California where foreclosed homeowners have stolen their house back from Conejo Capital Partners, the bank that foreclosed on them:

Why are you surprised? More to the point, why is anyone surprised?

Look, this is what happens when you sit idly by and countenance rampant and outrageous lawbreaking: The people decide they'll do it too!

As for the police telling you that they won't get involved, cry me a river. There's a lady here in Florida who was not in foreclosure, the bank did not have a judgment of possession, and they hired a company to break into her home and change the locks - with her inside. That's breaking and entering anywhere, it's a serious felony, and in Florida at least a homeowner confronted with this is within his rights to shoot the people doing it. Yet when the Sheriff responded he refused to arrest the perpetrators.

It sounds like Conejo ran into the same problem. I'd be sympathetic, but I can't be so long as they do not demand that the same sanction attach to all the illegal bank activities in regard to these repossessions as well.

Of course, Conejo didn't do that.

Two wrongs don't make a right - just more wrongs. But the lesson here isn't that a couple and their kids "re-took" possession and claim their original foreclosure was "illegal." I don't know if it was or wasn't - what I know is that the chain of lawlessness didn't start with them, and it is impossible to condemn their actions standing alone. [Emphases in original]

Vox Day recognizes a grim historical pattern:

It's not a question of the Rule of Law since it is an observable fact that there is no law as such in the United States anymore, there is nothing more than the public pretense of law and the sporadic enforcement of that pretense on parties who do not belong to the government-favored classes. The Rule of Law has been replaced by the much weaker and more delicate Rule of Force.

This is nothing new, as Cicero's letters make it clear that the latter days of the Roman Republic featured a similarly dynamic and amorphous pretense of law. America as you knew it, as you imagined it to be, is no more. It has been gone for some time now and it was laid to rest by the same cancerous forces of greed, lawlessness, and ambition that have brought every other great society in human history to its eventual end.

The Carpenter's Calling

2010-10-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

Too often this blog is a lament over tyranny. Tonight I would rather quote a beautiful passage from Giovanni Papini's Life of Christ. It may not be true on every point of doctrine, but in essence it speaks the truth about the nature of God's love and redemption towards sinful man:

Jesus [while growing up] did not go to school to the Scribes nor to the Greeks. But He did not lack for teachers. Three teachers He had, greater than all the learned: work, nature and the Book.

It must never be forgotten that Jesus was a working man and the adopted son of a working man: that He was born poor, among people who worked with their hands; before He gave out His gospel He earned his daily bread with the labor of His hands. Those hands which blest the simple-hearted, which cured the lepers, which gave light to the blind, which brought the dead to life, those hands which were pierced with nails upon the cross, were hands which had been bathed with the sweat of labor, hands which had known the numbness of work, hands which were callous with work, hands which had held the tools of work, which had driven nails into wood, the hands of a working man.

Before being a workman of the spirit, Jesus was a man who worked with material things. He was poor before He summoned the poor to His table, to the festival of His Kingdom. He was not born into a wealthy family, into the house of luxury on a bed covered with purple and fine linen. Descendant of kings, He lived in a woodworker's shop: Son of God, He was born in a stable. He did not belong to the caste of the great, to the aristocracy of warriors, to the circles of the rich, to the Sanhedrim of the priests. He was born into the lowest class of the people, the class which has below it only the vagabonds, the beggars, the fugitives, the slaves, the criminals, the prostitutes. When He became no longer a manual worker, He went down lower yet in the eyes of respectable folk, and sought His friends in the miserable huddle which is even below the common people. But until that day when Jesus, before going down into the Inferno of the dead, went down into the Inferno of the living, His position was that of a poor working man and nothing more, in the hierarchy of castes which eternally separates men.

Jesus' trade is one of the four oldest and most sacred of men's occupations. The trades of the peasant, the mason, the smith, the carpenter are, among the manual arts, those most impregnated with the life of man, the most innocent and the most religious. The warrior degenerates into a bandit, the sailor into a pirate, the merchant into an adventurer, but the peasant, the mason, the smith, the carpenter do not betray, cannot betray, do not become corrupt. They handle the most familiar materials, and their task is to transform them visibly into visible, solid, concrete creations, useful to all men. The peasant breaks the clod and takes from it the bread eaten by the saint in his grotto and the murderer in his prison. The mason squares the stone and builds up the house of the poor man, the house of the king, the house of God. The smith heats and fashions the iron to give a sword to the soldier, a plowshare to the peasant, a hammer to the carpenter. The carpenter saws and nails the wood to construct the door which protects the house from the thieves, to make the bed on which thieves and innocent people die.

These plain things, these common, ordinary, useful things, so usual, common and ordinary that they pass disregarded under our eyes used to more complicated marvels, are the simplest creations of man, but more miraculous and essential than any later inventions.

Jesus, the carpenter, lived in His youth in the midst of these things, made them with His hands, and for the first time by means of these things manufactured by Him, entered into communion with the daily life of men, with the most intimate and sacred life, home life. He made the table around which it is so sweet to sit in the evening with one's friends, even if one of them is a traitor; the bed whereon a man draws his first and last breath; the chest where the country wife keeps her poor clothes, her aprons, her handkerchiefs for festivals, and the starched white shirts for great days. He made the kneading trough where the flour is put, and the leaven raises it until it is ready for the oven; and the arm-chair where the old men sit around the fire of an evening to talk of never-returning youth.

Often while the thin, light shavings curled up under the steel of His plane and the sawdust rained down on the ground, Jesus must have thought of the promises of His Father, of the prophecies of old time, of what He was to create, not with boards and rules, but with spirit and truth.

His trade taught Him that to live means to transform dead and useless things into living and useful things: that the meanest material fashioned and shaped can become precious, friendly, useful to men: that the only way to bring salvation is to transform; and that just as a child's crib or a wife's bed can be made out of a log of olive wood, gnarled, knotty and earthy, so the filthy money-changer and the wretched prostitute can be transformed into true citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. *

Caveat: Papini's book contains grave theological errors (e.g., works salvation and, in some passages, a gnostic disdain for matter).

* Giovanni Papini, Life of Christ (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1923), pp. 34-37.

Will the "Internet Kill Switch" Work?

2010-10-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

Paul Rosenberg, in The State Versus the Internet, says yes:

We often say that the Internet is decentralized, which is more or less true, but it is not atomized. There are perhaps a few thousand large units called Autonomous Systems (AS) that make-up the Internet, and they relate to each other with Border Gateway Protocols.

BGP is, essentially, a type of "handshake" protocol: I acknowledge you, do you acknowledge me? Who is connected beyond you? The problem with BGP is that it is not verifiable. This isn’t a big problem – as we know, the Internet works just fine nearly every day – but on rare occasion something does go wrong. From a controller’s standpoint, however, BGP is a huge problem, because it cannot be grasped at a single point.

Enter SecureBGP (BGPSEC) Under this scheme, key exchanges between border gateway routers are involved, to verify that the other router is who it says it is. The problem here is that someone will want to be the official key creator and holder… which means the state. And the US government is working very hard to build this. (They already have a domain name version called DNSSec.)

If the key certificate authority for BGPSEC is anything like SSL certificate authorizers, then each layer of key provider will control the keys below it. That means that specific servers or groups of servers can be disconnected from the Internet within minutes. But even if that type of hierarchy is not part of the code, it is close to certain that AS groups will comply with orders, especially if disobedience means they will be shut down entirely. [Emphasis added]

So, yes, the Internet Kill Switch will work, sorry to say.

It seems to me that the Internet is too large and complex for the U.S. Government to control absolutely. Programmers and hackers, unencumbered by bureaucratic restraints, will easily stay ahead of the spooks both on defensive and offensive terms (e.g., encryption and viruses).

And the problem is not merely technical but cultural. Two generations of Americans are now accustomed to a free flow of electronic information. They are habituated to spotting and avoiding censorship - even private censorship for copyright or ideological reasons - wherever it occurs. Block one avenue of knowledge and they actively, almost instinctively, seek or create another avenue, in an independent and decentralized manner. The ruling class, thinking in the old terms of mass culture and mass obedience, doesn't grasp this critical point. Nor does it comprehend the depth and breadth of popular resentment and suspicion it has provoked by years of lying and plundering. Cyber-censorship imposed for the "public good" will be seen exactly for what it is: a power grab by a pack of sanctimonious crooks. The desire to resist and foil it will be almost obsessive. Think of Prohibition, but this time with nearly everyone below the age of 50 a regular heavy drinker.

None of this means that our rulers won't be stupid enough to try. I presume they will hit the "kill switch" before, during, or after the first massacre of street protesters. They will make high profile busts of people engaged in "cyber-terrorism". They will accomplish or attempt still more evil things. But it will not save the system.

Emerging Pockets of Anarchy

2010-10-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

From Oregon and California comes news that cash-strapped city and county governments have begun to ignore petty crimes committed against citizens (trespassing, disorderly conduct, even shoplifting). It's the same process that has reached a more advanced stage in Cairo, Illinois: the ebbing of local law enforcement due to a withering economy. If the downward slide continues, we will see large pockets of genuine anarchy emerge in America, where inhabitants will either learn to cooperate for mutual protection or cower in their homes from the barbarians prowling all around.

First Experience with Heirloom Vegetable Seeds

2010-10-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

Last year I blogged on the advantage of using heirloom garden seeds instead of hybrids: the second generation of plants will breed true from saved seed, so you won't need to keep buying new hybrid seeds every year. It's equally true that hybrids can more disease-resistant and productive than heirlooms. Experimentation is the only way to find out what works best in your garden.

My first heirloom spring garden wasn't a great success. The bell peppers produced few fruits. The tomatoes yielded a better crop than the peppers did, but still far less than most hybrid tomatoes I've grown. The lettuce and bok choy should have been planted last fall, but the bok choy at least produced plenty of seed for a second try. The sugar snap peas and yardlong beans were stellar performers, and I'm now growing a second generation of beans from saved seed. The Suyo Long cucumbers also did well.

Stagflation on Steroids

2010-10-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

During the 1970s recession, economists coined the term stagflation to describe the combination of high unemployment and steep inflation. I was only a boy at the time, unaware of conditions in the job market, but I do remember the skyrocketing prices on the small items I could buy with my allowance. Candy bars, for instance, suddenly doubled in price and shrank in size.

Courtesy of the master class looters, Americans in 2010 are experiencing the early stages of a much more severe stagflation, as reported in The Economic Collapse blog:

American families better get ready to tighten their belts again. There is every indication that we are all going to really start feeling the squeeze in the months ahead. The price of gas is starting to spike again. The price of food is moving north. Health insurance premium increases are being announced coast to coast and a whole slate of tax increases is scheduled to go into effect in 2011. Meanwhile, household incomes are down substantially all over the nation and the U.S. government is indicating that there will not be an increase in Social Security benefits for the upcoming year once again. So if the cost of most of the basic things in our monthly budgets is going up and our incomes are going down what does that mean? It means that average American families are about to be squeezed like nothing we have seen in decades.

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The Economy in Extremis

2010-10-11T09:11:00.001-07:00

In his column on Foreclosuregate, Vox Day writes:

The present economic situation is far more dire than is being reported by the media, the official declaration by the NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee that the recession ended in June 2009 notwithstanding. Consider the way in which commercial bank credit has plunged an unprecedented 13.6 percent since its peak in December 2008; the previous two-year record was the 0.8 percent decline during 1974 and 1975. Since bank credit has historically grown by 8.4 percent each year, this means that the credit supply of the U.S. economy is presently $2.1 trillion below where it would have been if the economy had continued to grow normally in 2009 and 2010.

The recent confirmation that the entire U.S. financial system is presently resting upon a foundation of fraudulent securities backed by defaulting mortgages to which no one holds a valid title is unlikely to materially improve this situation. The problem is that for the last 20 years, under political pressure from the banks, both political parties have colluded in eviscerating the legal system of property rights that economist Hernando de Soto has demonstrated is required for a capitalist system to generate wealth. This short-sighted financial rapine has not only ruined the economy, but may have even managed to permanently damage the wealth-producing infrastructure of American society. [Emphasis added]

Karl Denninger believes that the banks' deliberate subversion of the land title system, which enabled them to package vast numbers of mortgages into fraudulent securities, has:

...massively corrupted the chain of title for perhaps as much as one third to one half of all residential housing units in this country and if not corrected will render these homes unmarketable in the future.

Now we hear that Senate Democrats are holding hearings on a proposal for government seizure of private 401(k) accounts.

The government and financial sectors have degenerated into a mere partnership of looters, turning America into a gargantuan banana republic where productive labor (outside the black market) is virtually a sucker's bet and traditional patriotism - the kind that takes pride in civic institutions - is reduced to a morbid joke.

Update

Vox Day, in a dialogue with Ilana Mercer, explains the essence of Foreclosuregate:

What happened was that the banks wanted to create mortgage-backed securities, but selling the securities legally required transferring the notes and titles as per the land title system. But that would have cost a lot in filing fees and all but eliminated their profits, so they simply ignored the law, created an electronic registry called MERS, and thereby ripped off large financial investors by selling worthless paper. The foreclosure-based fraud about which you have such doubts is merely the cover-up that resulted from the way in which a need to foreclose exposed the initial fraud.

Turning Our Coins Into Play Money

2010-05-12T05:28:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Indonesia, where inflation was rampant, the smallest denominations of the rupiah (the national currency) were coins that seemed to be made of plastic. They looked and felt like play money. I was convinced they would float on water until experimentation proved otherwise.

It won't be long before American coins have the same heft.

Defying the Census

2010-03-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

As a Houstonian, I feel proud to live in the heart of census nullification country. From the Houston Chronicle, via Lewrockwell.com:

Texas is counting on the 2010 Census to deliver four new congressional districts, four new Electoral College votes in presidential elections, and millions of dollars in additional federal aid. But, as some elected officials are starting to worry, Uncle Sam can't deliver anything to the rapidly growing Sun Belt state unless Texas residents deliver their forms back to the government.

As of Friday afternoon, only 27 percent of Texas households had filled in and returned their census forms – well below the national average of 34 percent – according to computer data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In Harris County, the response rate is 23 percent. Houston's returns are running at 21 percent.

Contrary to historical trends, some of the toughest challenges facing the agency responsible for measuring the nation's population are not from counting the traditionally undercounted groups such as African-Americans and Latinos. Instead, a new and growing threat to an accurate national head count is coming from anti-government conservatives who may not fill out their forms to protest against “Big Brother” in Washington.

Predictably, the journos whine that non-compliance with illegal State intrusiveness constitutes a "threat." In a way they're correct. Nullification - the refusal to obey or enforce unconstitutional laws - erodes the legitimacy of the master class and threatens its agenda of totalitarian control.

I expect at least some of the census takers will get truculent as they go door to door, threatening citizens with fines if they won't divulge any information beyond the constitutionally mandated head count. How will "anti-government conservatives" react to bullying from stripling bureaucrats who represent not just a despotic government, but a Democrat president they heartily despise, in a political climate where nullification and even state secession are openly discussed and advocated? Not well, I expect, and not submissively.

Update (4/1/10)

Last night the local Fox affiliate news program warned that non-compliant Houstonians will be subjected to a campaign of "harassment" by the census minions. They actually used that word, not a euphemism like "assistance" or "visits by census takers." The master class and its spokesmen no longer bother to conceal their abusive intentions toward the proles.

A Vote "Wasted" in Good Conscience

2010-03-03T05:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my wife and I voted for gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina in the Texas Republican primary. She obtained 19% of the vote, not bad for a first-time run at public office.

The Dallas Morning News published the following 50 facts on Medina:

1. Debra Medina is a staunch supporter of gun rights and keeps a Springfield 9 mm gun in a case in her car.

2. She is a registered nurse.

3. She originally wanted to be a doctor, but switched to nursing after a tough physics course.

4. She started a medical billing company, Prudentia Inc., in 2002.

5. Her husband, Noe, is one her employees.

6. Her biggest campaign theme is the idea that states can ignore federal laws they deem unconstitutional.

7. Her comments about secession might make Gov. Rick Perry blush. At one rally she said: “We are aware that stepping off into secession may in fact be a bloody war. We understand that the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood tyrants and patriots.” Medina says she doesn’t support secession, though.

8. She was born June 1, 1962, on a farm near Beeville, Texas.

9. Her full name is Debra Carolyn Parker Medina.

10. She has three siblings.

11. Growing up, she helped her family raise chickens and dairy cows. They also ran beef cattle.

12. Her family raised or grew almost all of their food.

13. She played tenor sax in her high school band.

14. She didn’t play sports in high school, but she got plenty of exercise breaking in horses after school.

15. Her dad worked at the telephone company, and her mother was a stay-at-home mom.

16. She has been estranged from her parents ever since they disproved of her marriage to Noe Medina, who is Mexican-American, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

17. She was president of her high school’s Future Farmers of American parliamentary procedures team.

18. Medina’s performance in the first televised GOP debate caused her to surge in the polls.

19. It caught the attention of her opponents, too. Soon after the debate, a reporter asked Gov. Rick Perry about his opponent’s criticism and he asked, “Now, which opponent are you talking about?”

20. She wants a complete audit of the Texas Transportation Department.

21. She met Noe Medina the year she graduated from high school. They married two years later, in 1982.

22. She and her husband have two grown children — Jacob Medina, 20, a student at Texas A&M, and Janise Cookston, 25, an interior designer in Houston.

23. She home-schooled her children.

24. She says her proudest moments are the successes of her children.

25. Medina’s favorite vacation was a skiing trip to Silver Creek, Colo.

26. She has degrees from Bee County Junior College (now Coastal Bend College); Southwest Baptist Hospital School of Nursing in San Antonio; and LeTourneau University.

27. She has watched almost no television in the last six years.

28. Her family’s favorite movie is The Man From Snowy River.

29. She considers her stance against abortion one of her most important personal beliefs.

30. She was raised Catholic, but now attends Williams Trace Baptist Church in Sugar Land.

31. She became interested in politics after being shocked that deacons from one of her past churches helped defeat an anti-abortion resolution at a Republican county convention.

32. She became Wharton County GOP chairwoman in 2004. She lost her bid for state GOP vice chairwoman in 2008.

33. She voted for George W. Bush for president in 2004, but not Republican nominee John McCain in 2008.

34. She was a high-level volunteer for Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign.

35. She describes her relationship with Paul as “good,” but frames it more as the typical interaction a constituent might have with a congressman.

36. She wants to eliminate property taxes and replace them with an expanded sales tax.

37. Her favorite place in Texas is her home in Wharton.

38. Medina said she’s not as limber as she once was getting around her ranch. She said she has had several embarrassing farm mishaps, including having to crawl back to her house one time after falling off a wooden fence.

39. Her favorite activity is a “good meal with family,” and everyone in her family cooks.

40. She loves a ribeye steak.

41. For special occasions, her family goes to Houston to eat at Fogo de Chao or Americas.

42. She has a pair of golden retrievers, Mae and Mason.

43. She is a prolific reader, and she is currently working her way through a compilation of anti-Federalist papers.

44. If she could listen to only one band for the rest of her life, it would be the contemporary Christian group Phillips, Craig and Dean.

45. One of her biggest concerns is stopping illegal immigration. She wants to post the Texas National Guard along the Texas-Mexico border.

46. She created a stir on Glenn Beck’s radio show when she didn’t immediately refute a fringe theory that the Bush administration played a role in the 9/11 attacks. She disavowed the conspiracy later that day.

47. She has never run for a government office.

48. She was emboldened to run for governor after receiving positive feedback from her speech at a November 2008 rally against the Federal Reserve.

49. Her daughter ultimately convinced her to run for governor.

50. Most experts peg her as a long shot to win the Republican primary, but just weeks ago, most thought she had no chance of even forcing a runoff.

Medina has spent a lifetime creating wealth, helping to grow and raise food for the family when she was a child. She has raised a family of her own. She is intellectually curious and eager to learn. She is willing to take unpopular stands and defy the odds. She does not dismiss, out of hand, accusations of government conspiracies against the people. She practices, and avows the individual right to, gun ownership. Above all, she is willing to pronounce even the bitterest truths (see Number 7).

All these are qualities of a model citizen. May her star continue to rise in the freedom movement.

"Urban Farm Movement is Taking Root in Akron"

2010-02-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

In Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, there is a planet called Trantor, the capital of a galactic empire. Every square foot of that world is urban. When the empire falls after a long age of decline, and Trantor becomes virtually deserted, the few remaining inhabitants start tearing away the steel and concrete to expose the soil beneath. Then they farm.

This article in the Akron Beacon Journal describes a somewhat similar process taking place in several cities in Ohio:

In Pittsburgh, Youngstown and Cleveland, gardening and urban farming are vital parts of revitalization plans — and Akron isn't far behind. Grow Pittsburgh promotes local,
urban food through farmer education, school gardening and a host of other projects.

Grow Pittsburgh's Braddock Farm project is a large-scale urban demonstration farm operating on eight city lots in Pittsburgh's historic borough of Braddock, set against the backdrop of the borough's last operating steel mill.

In 2009, the half-acre farm's second year of operation, hundreds of pounds of organic vegetables and herbs were grown and then sold to area restaurants and the on-site farmers' market. Grow Pittsburgh's volunteers and staff, including youth employed for the growing season, tend the all-raised-bed farm.

Susanna Meyer, Grow Pittsburgh's director of agricultural production, said youth involved in the project learn where food comes from and how to grow produce, providing for some their first interaction with fresh food.

Meyer said Pittsburgh is ''ripe for urban farming'' because of the city's population loss and shift in recent decades, coupled with the amount of green and vacant space and the growing interest and awareness in gardening over the last decade.

''Young people in particular are looking to sustainability and want to provide for themselves,'' Meyer said.

Remember to Include Ammo in Your Preparations

2010-02-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

If you're preparing for hard times by stockpiling food and household supplies, and you have guns, do not neglect laying in a good supply of ammunition. Karl Denninger, in his open letter to the police and politicians of America, notes the size and ferocity of the urban gangs spawned by Federal drug prohibition. In a protracted period of social chaos, you and your neighbors might have to put out a fair amount of lead to protect your families and your property:

There are approximately 150,000 federally-attached law enforcement personnel. Another 750,000, roughly, state and local cops are employed by our various government arms. Of those various officers well more than half sit behind a desk and haven't left one gram of shoe leather on a street or in a cruiser in the last year. The majority of you fire your weapons for periodic qualification and they have never been warm or dirty besides. You've never faced death, you've never had a weapon pointed at you in anger, and you've never drawn your service weapon in the line of duty. Those are facts.

Now consider the "bad side" of America. The Justice Department estimates there are at least one million gang members - active gang members - in America. These people, mostly young males, have nearly all drawn or fired weapons in anger. They are responsible for more than three quarters of all crime in this country, and some eight out of ten violent crimes. Those gang members have families - younger males who are "coming up", "friends" (if you can call a murderous thug a friend) and others. Between all of those "loosely attached" folks and the hard-core inner circle itself we probably have somewhere between 5 and 10 million people in this nation who, given the wrong sort of provocation, might decide that "Zombieland" wasn't just a movie.

Is Austin a Harbinger of Things to Come?

2010-02-18T15:49:00.000-08:00

Joseph Stack was not a revolutionary martyr, even though his kamikaze mission targeted an office of the Internal Revenue Service, America's most feared and hated government agency. If his on-line manifesto is genuine, he was a man who'd reached the end of his tether after years of abuse from a corrupt, despotic political system. He chose to lash out in self-immolating despair, dying as a suicide and possibly a murderer (one worker in the Echelon building is still unaccounted for as of this writing).

How many Americans will take this as a cue to strike at Leviathan, either singly or in groups? Vox Day and Karl Denninger wonder if the Austin, TX attack is a harbinger of more anti-government violence, as increasing numbers of citizens come to the conclusion that peaceful reform is no longer possible.

Vox writes:

A society whose leaders are foolish enough to willfully destroy its structural foundations should not be surprised when madmen increasingly begin to appear in its midst. But the problem is that insane actions such as Stack's are merely a symptom; what is ultimately much more problematic is all the talented individuals who simply won't bother to create wealth that is only going to be taken away from them. I suppose it may be possible to maintain a wealthy and stable society that consists of nothing more than government employees and a vast horde of unemployed individuals supporting a small financial elite that generates enormous profits by playing complicated gambling games with itself, but if it is, I have to confess that I understand neither the economics nor the logic that makes it viable.

We can quite reasonably describe Joseph Stack as a madman, categorize his suicidal actions as insanity, and ignore his rantings as the last angry words of an embittered failure. He was, after all, the very antithesis of a hero and his actions were as stupid and evil as they were futile. But I think we should also ask two questions before we forget the episode entirely entirely. Was the man always a lunatic? And if not, what was it that turned him into one?

Young Man's Face, Old Man's Eyes

2010-02-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

Marine Lance Cpl. Andrew Koenig is blessed to be alive after taking a shot to the head. His helmet stopped the Afghan sniper's bullet.

Look at this young man's face, particularly his eyes. That haunted stare reflects the very soul of war. It's something no actor can fake, and it shows just how cheap and hollow are the political slogans that civilians mouth by way of "supporting the troops."

Extend Your Growing Season: Build A Greenhouse

2010-02-16T05:02:00.000-08:00

Juliana 4-Tier Growing Rack
A miniature greenhouse available from Walmart (mail order only)

If 2010's frigid manifestation of global "warming" teaches gardeners anything, it's the utility of a greenhouse. You can purchase a small greenhouse kit online, or build one using inexpensive materials. The following web site has links to various plans:

Build A Greenhouse

Down here in southeast Texas, winter temperatures seldom dip below the 30's Fahrenheit. But we do get cold snaps taking us down into the 20's (which is still balmy compared to conditions farther north).

The wind from advancing cold fronts can be a bigger problem than the cold itself, as I discovered to my chagrin the other day. A strong gust tipped over my outdoor growing shelf, spilling all of the seedlings and soil into a jumble. I saved most of the plants, but now the varieties are mixed up and I don't know which breed of tomato or pepper is which. God has shuffled the deck, so to speak. This will make separation of the varieties (to inhibit cross-pollination) difficult, so I'll have to make liberal use of tulle fabric shrouds over unfertilized tomato and pepper flowers. These flowers are self-fertilizing.

Update (3/3/10)

Although I'm highly satisfied with my newly purchased Juliana 4-tier growing rack, I quickly learned the importance of keeping it well-ventilated during sunny days. Several seedlings were cooked last week because I neglected to open and roll up the front flap. It takes little time for a greenhouse to become too hot. Check your plants frequently! You might also want to install a thermometer.

Strategic Default

2010-01-18T05:21:00.000-08:00

Since the big boys (banks and governments) are either defaulting, or will default, on payment of impossible debts, it behooves mortgaged home "owners" to consider the same course of action. CPA Karen De Coster has been careful to qualify this advice with the need to properly understand one's mortgage contract: If the mortgagor's obligation is either to pay on schedule or relinquish the property to the lender, he does not breach contract by ceasing payments and walking away from the house.

Nevertheless, De Coster's first column on the subject brought a torrent of vituperation from people who lack basic reading comprehension skills, or who naively accept the bankers' accusations that non-elite debtors somehow commit fraud if they avail themselves of their contractual rights. She has written a second column to address her critics:

The point is made that the mortgage is a business decision and a business contract is signed. The bank agreed upon the collateral (the house) and made the risk based on its own assessment of the collateral value. The mortgage contract is honored during a strategic default when the homeowner turns over the keys and walks away. Outside of any special contract spelling out additional obligations, there is no moral obligation to stay in the contract. There is not a moral question inherent in the contract.

During the bubble, the banks helped to perpetuate the boiling cauldron with their lack of underwriting standards, fraudulent loan devices, and their failure to properly assess the environment in which they were adding billions in loans to their balance sheets. They were taking exorbitant and asinine long-term risks. These banks became inebriated on the enormous here-and-now profits so they could pay out outrageous bonuses to their reckless risk takers and debt pushers. The banking system melted down, in part, because of the problems perpetuated by the very banks that are now suffering form the foreclosure-o-rama. Bad business decisions were made all around, leading, in part, to the mass collapse of banks on Wall Street and Main Street.

Yet I received tons of hate mails from financially illiterate folks who failed to read what I wrote in my article. They read right past what I clearly stated. We can thank the public schools for turning people into collective herds of non-thinking, emotionally-driven folks who cannot get past the first image that floats into their minds. As one commenter said on my blog, you cannot present “logical arguments to a society that is emotionally-driven. The mob is emotional, not rational; a free market can absorb this, since irrational players are marginalized (they go broke), but a democracy subsidizes irrational behavior. … The Great Society was one of the more cynically successful human engineering projects in history, it changed an entire society from independent to dependent.”

Future Generations Will Scarcely Believe This

2010-01-08T05:33:00.000-08:00

Unsold but perfectly usable clothing being mutilated and thrown in the garbage by retailers.

I support the right to property, including destruction of said property by the owner if he so wishes. I can fathom the mercantile reasoning that views the giving away of products - to be used by potential customers or resold by competitors - as an unwise and self-defeating business practice. But the generations of Americans to come, witnessing and experiencing a great deal more poverty than we have known, will regard this purposeful ruination of surplus wealth as utterly insane.

Why Detroit Is Dying

2010-01-07T05:17:00.000-08:00

Detroit was once a productive city, thanks to private enterprise. Decades of government looting and extortion (the latter euphemistically called regulation) have reduced the metropolis to its present state of decay and literal, physical collapse:

Notable among the ruins are residential neighborhoods built with "model city" government subsidies (i.e., money stolen from the earnings of the productive). With no actual wealth creation and profit to sustain these edifices, they've succumbed to entropy. They're the American equivalent of abandoned Soviet structures and factory towns, which were also erected by government edict with no regard for economic reality.

In essence, modern government regulation (as opposed to beneficial laws that protect persons and property from fraud and violence) is, at best, the forcing of non-elite people to act out the fantasies of those who exercise political power over them. In most cases it's just a cynical pretext for organized robbery.

No Limits to Government Depravity

2009-12-31T05:55:00.001-08:00

To the lengthening list of government crimes and vices in Police State America, we can now add voyeurism. For air travelers, submitting to this degradation will become mandatory as whole-body imaging scanners are installed in airports across the country. The next logical step is clearly hinted at in this pro-scanner NBC article:

The scanners are able to detect weapons and explosives in places security screeners are not allowed to touch in physical pat-down searches, such as the groin area and even body cavities where items could be concealed.

So, when our rulers eventually permit or instigate the next underwear bomber stunt, wherein the "terrorist" manages to smuggle his nefarious device on board the aircraft despite being voyeur-scanned, they will use it as a pretext to implement selective, literal strip searches, with TSA finger probing of anuses and vaginas.

Even if the TSA's appetite for domination and free porn is satiated by the scanners, the practice will effectively deny commercial air travel to anyone having moral or religious scruples about it. One can discern Satan's subtle hand in this: No need to revoke the passports of American Christians bound for the overseas mission fields. Just give them the option of submitting to perversion or staying in the Homeland. The Enemy used the same indirect strategy against the Word: No need to ban the Bible. Just turn the general population into illiterates via government schools.

I'm beginning to realize that we Americans are being hemmed in, gradually sealed off from the rest of the world, as air travel becomes an ever more restricted privilege.

Thoughts at the End of 2009

2009-12-30T19:36:00.000-08:00

It's been a blessed year for my wife and me. The Lord has guided us to a nearby house church, where, in addition to prayer, fellowship, and study of the Word, we can speak frankly about subjects that most churches gloss over with empty platitudes or regurgitated government propaganda. At present there are only five members. Please pray that God will show us how to serve Him by reaching out to others.

On the material side of things, we're both healthy and we have satisfactory jobs with good pay. For now at least, we are not experiencing the worry and sorrow of so many others who are being dragged down financially by the collapsing Ponzi scheme economy of government and private debt.

My sister-in-law will be deploying to Iraq in two months. She's a newly minted Army captain, serving as a physician's assistant. The extent to which the resistance controls the country, despite more than six years of U.S. military occupation, can be guessed by the advice she and her fellow recruits were given during training: once in the "Sandbox", stay on the FOB for the entirety of your tour. Sister-in-law joined the Army for several reasons, none of them sentimental or ideological. Among the chief motivators was the constant risk of being fined or jailed under the tyrannical regulations that bedevil private medicine in America. She'd had all she could stand of it. As much as I despise the empire and its trampling of Iraq, and as bad a choice as I believe it was for her to enlist in the legions, I feel a measure of empathy. If you had to risk either slavery in the U.S. prison system or becoming a casualty of war, mightn't you be tempted to consider the latter hazard preferable? At least in the second case, you're permitted to shoot back.

I'm gratified that the Global Warming hoax has finally been exposed.

Regardless of the planet's temperatures, I plan to bring still more of our backyard under cultivation next year, setting up trellises to train vines upward wherever possible. This will yield more produce per square foot. Eventually I'd like to tear out the entire back lawn but, with the torrential rains we get in Texas, I can't afford to be hasty. If I mess up the drainage pattern badly enough, we'll have standing water and maybe even a bit of house flooding. 2010 will be the first season I'll raise plants mostly from heirloom seeds. I'll be trying huckleberries, and my wife and I look forward to making jam with them.

Next year I will put up a greater number of posts on practical things relating to gardening and preparedness for hard times.

Global Warming

2009-12-04T11:24:00.001-08:00

Image Source: Houston Chronicle

We hardly ever see snow down here in Houston, but the white stuff has been coming down since this morning. It's the earliest snowfall in the city's history.

Measures of Desperation

2009-12-03T05:37:00.000-08:00

Leaving aside for a moment the familiar economic indicators (GDP, stock market, unemployment, housing sales, etc.), Michael Panzner at the Financial Armageddon blog looks at The Harsh Reality of hunger in America:

In yesterday's post, "Forced to Be More Flexible", I highlighted a Brandweek report indicating that current economic conditions are leading consumers to rethink what they eat. Regardless of personal preferences, many are switching to cheaper alternatives or trading down to private label food products. But a growing number of people are being faced with a more unsettling concern. They are not so focused on which products they should buy; they are worrying about how they are going to get enough food to eat at all....

Panzner links to articles on the respective subjects of charitable food pantries (which are seeing a greater number of first time users), food stamps (being issued at record levels), and hunger among the elderly (on the rise).

These are harbingers of worse things to come. Most poverty relief efforts are based on the fiat dollar. In severe deflation or severe inflation they will falter or collapse. Government welfare will die with the dollar. Private charity will survive in direct contribution of goods, and perhaps expand more in the direction of gleaning. The latter practice is worth an entry by itself.

If you're still able to build up a food reserve in your home pantry, do it now.

Obama's Role Defined

2009-11-28T06:09:00.000-08:00

Michael Rozeff identifies President Obama's function in our moribund, imperial order:

Obama is the establishment's attempt to put a new face on its old, tired, and worn out nostrums. Fewer and fewer people are buying, but the compulsion machine just keeps on centralizing the money flows. It knows no better. Top-down government centralization doesn't work, but the machine keeps running. Obama's cachet is evaporating after less than one year. He's now under 50 percent approval.

My family is mostly Democrat in affiliation or sympathy. They greeted the new emperor with hosannas when he won the election. Now they don't even speak his name. Conversation among old folks at the Thanksgiving dinner table lingered on two assertions: (1) No matter what they do to the rest of us, congressmen will get enormous perks and the best available medical care, all at our expense; (2) Israel is sucking up enormous amounts of our tax dollars, which it uses to fund a police state where Arabs are at best second-class citizens.

Granted, this is a tiny sampling of Baby Boomer opinion on just two topics. But it suggests a gradual awakening among people who used to support the welfare/warfare state without question. They still fear freedom. They still want the dole. They're probably down with bombing folks in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the same time, they can no longer ignore the overwhelming incompetence and corruption of the Federal Government.

"Replacement, Not Capture"

2009-11-27T06:34:00.000-08:00

Gary North's article "Digits and Revolution" presents the decline of the U.S. Postal Service as an example of how to recover freedom from a centralizing bureaucracy:

Years ago, my friend Robert Thoburn, the entrepreneur who developed Fairfax Christian School, was standing in line at the Post Office at Christmas time. The line was very long. He turned somebody next to him and said it would sure be better if the system were run by the government. He got an incredulous look; then that person smiled. Thirty years ago, that seemed like a fruitless observation. Yet, as it has turned out, we could lose the Post Office tomorrow and barely feel it. We don't use first-class mail to communicate any longer. We use the Internet. We use Federal Express and UPS and other delivery systems to deliver anything really important that we have to send. The Post Office in effect has gone senile.

We don't sense that it's gone. Yet the reality is this: we have replaced something with things that are better. Therefore, at some point, we will see the Post Office either go out of business or become simply a forgotten memory. Yet the Post Office is part of the Constitutional system. The Post Office has always been a way for the government to control the flow of information. As Robert Nisbet said in an autobiographical essay, in the year he was born, 1913, the only contact that the average American had with the Federal government was the Post Office. How much contact do you have with the Postal Service today? It delivers mostly junk mail to you. We ought to think of the U.S. Postal Service not as snail mail but as junk mail. It is the junk mail service for the junk mail industry. Even this is subsidized. It gets cheaper rates.

We have seen the demise of the Post Office operationally over the last ten years, yet we have paid almost no attention to this. There has not been a revolution in our thinking about the Post Office. There has simply been a kind of forgetfulness. We haven't paid much attention to the fact that we don't need it anymore. This has not taken any kind of an organized political movement.

The Post Office is sacrosanct. It is untouchable. But now it is simply ignored. This is the best way to have a revolution. Create a free-market alternative to a particular government institution, and then refuse to use the boondoggle anymore. At some point, we can simply vote to de-fund it. We can privatize it. Nobody will care, because hardly anybody is using the system any longer.

Here is my slogan for political reform: Replacement, not capture; then de-funding.

Let us take this slogan and begin to apply it to all the government institutions that we deal with on a regular basis. Apply it especially to the Federal government.

Modern Britons Worse Off Than Medieval Serfs?

2009-11-18T11:14:00.001-08:00

Commenting on yesterday's post about tyranny in Nanny State Britain, Broken raises an interesting question:

"I wonder if anyone who knows enough would care to explore whether, when some of the most oppressive living under previous regimes when titles or rank meant something, were they not somewhat better off than they are now? Was ancient feudalism any worse?"

Off the top of my head, I can name at least three points on which feudalism was less oppressive than the government which rules England today. To be specific (and open to correction from anyone who can prove otherwise), I see the following relative advantages for an English medieval commoner:

1. The nanny state, via gun control laws, makes self-defense against criminals exceedingly difficult and dangerous. The balance of power is horribly tilted in favor of evil when a gun-wielding thug confronts a law-abiding victim. Put another way, modern Britons are legally required to give a deadly technological advantage to criminals. Medieval commoners might have been forbidden to use swords, but they were free to use knives, bows and arrows, cudgels, quarterstaffs, pitchforks, and axes against crooks. The wicked enjoyed no great advantage in weaponry. A man skilled with the quarterstaff could hold his own against a swordsman. Crime was thus better kept in check, and ordinary people did not live in helpless terror of common hooligans.

2. The nanny state arbitrarily prohibits (or interferes with) certain acts of kindness and mercy, from babysitting a friend's child without a government license to saving neighbors from a burning house. Not only were commoners in the Middle Ages permitted to help each other in these ways, but it would never have entered the mind of a medieval sheriff, baron, or king to forbid such things.

3. The nanny state claims the authority to micromanage the family in the name of health, safety, and education, even to the point of installing cameras in people's homes, and forbidding parents to supervise their own children on the playgrounds. No sphere of ordinary life is sacrosanct from the official snoops and busybodies. The medieval home was not inviolate but, generally speaking, a commoner's family life was not the subject of government scrutiny unless there was suspicion of fomenting or abetting rebellion.

This is not to imply that medieval life was better on the whole. In most material things, modern Britons, even the poor ones, live better than feudal monarchs. Legal protections against torture and imprisonment without trial, taken for granted today, were unknown in the darkest periods of English feudalism. The class system remains, but its present inequities (if inequities they may be called) are of a purely social nature. It is nothing like the ancient Anglo-Saxon order wherein a commoner who killed a nobleman was put to death, but a nobleman who killed a commoner merely paid a fine. People are free to emigrate from the UK, whereas the serfs of old could not even move freely within the country, being bound to the land almost like chattel property.

But modern socialism, no less than feudalism, imagines a status society where the individual's place is determined by the state. Socialism has spawned regimes more brutal and despotic than any medieval government, in large part because as a modernist ideology it rejects Christian moral restraints on political power. The violations of personal and property rights enumerated above show that Britain is moving toward a re-imposition of serfdom, albeit on a new pattern where the serfs are permitted the illusory freedom of voting for which master shall rule over them. Whether this is dictated from London or Brussels, the outcome will be the same.

The Nadir of Political Evil

2009-11-16T18:51:00.000-08:00

How do you tell when a political system has reached the nadir of evil? Is it at the point where the state enslaves and kills millions of its subjects, or establishes a cult of hysterical dictator worship? Or can a government cross that threshold in a less dramatic way? It seems to me that evil and politics become virtually identical when an ordinary man can no longer fathom the arbitrary demands of his rulers, and runs afoul of them even when he attempts to obey them.

From an article on the UK web site Surrey Today:

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty".

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year's imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: "I didn't think for one moment I would be arrested.

"I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets."

To get a more comprehensive idea of just how morally inverted Britain has become, read some of the posts on the Nanny Knows Best blog. Though written with wit and humor, they tell a sad tale of a once free nation whose native population is harangued, hounded, and punished simply for going about their business. For example, it is apparently a crime in the UK to babysit without a license.

I know too little about British politics to guess what might replace this loathsome system when it has run its course. But even a crude authoritarian regime, which gives its subjects a few comprehensible rules to follow, would be preferable to the merciless, invasive lunacy of a totalitarian social democracy. I won't be at all surprised to see Britons gravitating to that sort of political movement someday.

State Sovereignty: A Turf War

2009-11-10T04:50:00.000-08:00

The "Firearms Freedom Act" (HB-315) has been introduced into the Ohio House. The substance of the bill:

...to provide that ammunition, firearms, and firearm accessories that are manufactured and remain in in Ohio are not subject to federal laws and regulations derived under Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce and to require the words "Made in Ohio" be stamped on a central metallic part on any firearm manufactured and sold in Ohio.

Firearms Freedom Acts have already passed in Montana and Tennessee, and similar legislation has been introduced in other states. Predictably, the regime in Washington has denounced this state-level assertion of Tenth Amendment restrictions on central government power. So far, neither side has attempted to force the matter. The state politicians lack the confidence (and mass support) to challenge Washington with anything more than speeches and printed words.* The Feds evidently despise the provincial governments too greatly to fear them. But sooner or later, this political stalemate will be broken. The pressure from below will be relentless:

At the time of passage [of the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act] through the TN House and Senate, Judiciary Chairman Mae Beavers had this to say - "Be it the federal government mandating changes in order for the states to receive federal funds or the federal government telling us how to regulate commerce contained completely within this state - enough is enough. Our founders fought too hard to ensure states' sovereignty and I am sick of tired of activist federal officials and judges sticking their noses where they don't belong."

Such paeans to the Constitution might be more or less sincere, but essentially this is a turf war. Federal and state officials were mostly thick as thieves during the boom years. The latter may have resented the former's encroachments on their power, but with everything pumped up on credit, there seemed to be plenty of loot to keep both gangs satisfied. The dual separation of powers conceived by America's founders - between the national and state governments, and among the three branches of the national government itself - has degenerated into a cynical collusion of elites against commoners. Now, with the boom over and the economy contracting, the thieves grumble amongst themselves. The small time bosses see their territories becoming ever poorer under the federal taxes and the currency depreciation. Unlike the big bosses, they cannot print their own money to run endless deficits. They cannot legalize and tax the drug trade. They cannot control their own borders where illegal immigration is a problem. More ominously, state politicos are much closer to their subjects, and therefore would bear the brunt of popular outrage if the depression leads to serious food shortages. They remember the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina, and they understand how limited will be the aid and protection from Washington in the event of a social breakdown.

Texas governor Rick Perry has couched talk of state secession in terms of flattery and reassurance to Washington: "We've got a great Union." But the fictional Lando Calrissian might be closer to the truth in muttering, "This deal's getting worse all the time." The flattery and empty declarations will stop (and enforcement of sovereignty claims will start) when the central government becomes too impoverished to bribe its satraps and too weak to punish them. You can always count on the politicians to look out for themselves first.

* Until the states are able and willing to enforce these laws against Federal usurpers, they are as toothless as the "nuclear free zone" ordinances passed by liberal local governments during the Eighties.

More Government School Child Abuse

2009-10-12T15:40:00.000-07:00

This time the victim is 6-year-old Zachary Christie:

Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.

Yep, just another day in the mind-squashing, soul-killing, "zero-tolerance" prison that is the Delaware state school system.

The good news is that Zachary's mother is home schooling him now. The bad news, it seems, is that she only intends to keep this up until her son's punishment is overturned or he goes into the kiddie lockup. After that, presumably, it's back to the regular "schoolag" for another 12 years of mandatory idiocy and degradation. Let's hope Mr. and Mrs. Christie will receive strong encouragement and support from home schooling parents, so that they decide to remove their precious son from the public school system altogether. They strike me as well-meaning people who've only begun to learn how much their government despises them. It's sad to think they might choose to go on being outraged, bewildered victims.

You have to wonder what motivates Zachary's tormentors, the teachers and administrators hell-bent on humiliating and "reforming" him. Their self-important yet feeble excuses give voice to the hive mind of bureaucracy. These drones received orders from above and they obeyed them, to keep their jobs, their status, and their place in the system. The nonsense they mouth about knife fights and eye-gouging is either a salve for the odd guilty conscience, or an attempt to manipulate parents into agreement or at least submission.

Young Zachary is wiser than his enemies:

...I think the rules are what is wrong, not me.

A Pitiful Sight

2009-10-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

In the dying days of vaudeville, when live variety show performers could barely hold their own against the new medium of film, vaudevillians found a precarious niche in "combination shows" with silent movies. The arrival and ubiquity of the "talkies" rendered their best efforts obsolete. From that time forward, pairing live acts with films could only call attention to the inferiority of the older medium. The better vaudeville performers adapted by going into films. The rest faded away.

I'm reminded of this historical transition every time I see television news reporters trying to do interesting stories about the Internet. Take this Fox News piece on peopleofwalmart.com, for example. It's a couple of boring, middle-aged suits yukking it up as they ineptly describe a brilliantly funny product created and distributed in a superior medium. More embarrassing than their lame commentary is the poor quality of the web site images they show the audience. Like the vaudeville/film combination, this serves only to reveal the shortcomings of the older form.

Who will be making or watching this antiquated, irritating junk when the Baby Boomers die out?

The Slow Death Of A County Government

2009-10-03T19:24:00.000-07:00

Ruined building in Cairo, Illinois

Alexander County, Illinois is running low on money and manpower:

CAIRO, Ill. - As sheriff in one of the state's poorest counties, David Barkett often has his hands full keeping drug and property crimes in check. But now things have gone from bad to worse to desperate in Alexander County, where 27 percent of residents live in poverty and the general fund has dwindled to $30,000.

Barkett this month laid off three-fourths of his staff, leaving just four deputies to help cover the county that spans more than 250 square miles in far southern Illinois. Just days later, he surrendered five patrol cars to the local bank for nonpayment, leaving his department just one county-owned vehicle.

And by midweek, Barkett's prisoners may be turned away from the regional jail because the county hasn't kept up paying for the upkeep of its inmates there.

Barkett admits his department is hogtied by the shortage of vehicles and deputies, but he remains undaunted:

"I firmly believe that the good will prevail, the good Lord willing," he said. "I'm not a quitter, and I wasn't elected to let these people down. And I have no intention to do that."

You have to wonder how many other county sheriffs are in the same predicament, watching their communities rotting away before their eyes. Without tax-funded governments to back them up, they will probably need to organize local militias to stave off anarchy.

Update (10-9-09)

The state government of Illinois is also broke. Comptroller Dan Hynes says his office is getting 2,600 calls a week from frantic creditors begging to be paid.

Tribal Chieftains?

2009-10-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

Karen De Coster has spotted an unintentionally revealing column by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. She draws particular attention to these passages, which express Noonan's vision of journalists' proper role in society:

Who are the Elders? They set the standards. They hand down the lore. They’re the oldest and wisest. By proceeding through the world each day with dignity and humanity, they show the young what it is that should be emulated. They’re the tribal chieftains. This role has probably existed since caveman days, because people need guidance and encouragement, they need to be heartened by examples of endurance. They need to be inspired.

…The new Elders will have to rescue America from the precipice. They’ll have to be mature, think of the collective, of the country as a whole.

After reading the entire editorial, I posted the following comment on Karen's blog:

That’s an ironic title ["Keeping America Safe From the Ranters"] for the WSJ editorial. Noonan’s demand for intellectual submission to the MSM is as a fine piece of pro-establishment ranting as you could ask for, once you get past the initial, maudlin blubbering about dead geezer journalists.

In some ways, she is more accurate than she knows in likening dead and doddering media gatekeepers to tribal chieftains. These would be chiefs who take their pay, and their orders, from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and who instruct the tribe to stay on Big White Father’s desolate reservation…and joyfully accept the wonderful smallpox blankets from GlaxoSmithKline. Tribal metaphors also bring to mind the MSM’s antiquated technology, and its proud cultural isolation from the wider world.

In other ways, Noonan’s analogy reveals her ignorance of how tribes actually worked. The chief was respected not because he was old, or because he affected a dignified posture, but because he spent a lifetime at productive tasks: hunting, gathering, building, herding, and/or engaging other tribes in trade, diplomacy, and war. He became an expert by virtue of experience and achievement, and he led by example until the tribe relegated him to advisory status in support of a succeeding, younger chief.

The more appropriate primitivist metaphor for the American MSM shill would be the lowest sort of Hollywood tribal witch doctor, the bug-eyed shaman who insists that his followers maintain an abject superstition, and who brands all useful innovations as sacrilege.

Noonan's real grievance is that the "ranters" (and by implication, all dissenters from the Establishment media) draw attention to the increasing poverty, instability, and lawlessness of modern America. None of these things were supposed to occur, according to the predictions of the government and its media propagandists. For decades, they've promised safety and stability at the expense of our liberty. Events are laying bare not only their dishonesty, but the ridiculous premises on which their lies were founded.

It's appropriate for elite mouthpieces to whine and beg for the respect which they've justly forfeited - a respect, we should note, they imperiously denied to their critics when they held a virtual monopoly on the flow of information. They show no signs of wanting to earn it back by demonstrating intellectual independence from the politicians. Even on a pure business level, they insanely persist in telling customers what they should want instead of adapting to meet actual market demand.

State Secession and Counter-Economics

2009-10-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

Dave Montgomery of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram surveys the rise of secession movements across the United States:

Fanned by angry contempt for Washington, secession movements have sprouted up in perhaps more than a dozen states in recent years. In Vermont, retired economics professor Thomas Naylor leads the Second Vermont Republic, a self-styled citizens network dedicated to extracting the sparsely populated New England state from "the American Empire."

And on the other side of the continent, Northwestern separatists envision a "Republic of Cascadia" carved out of Oregon, Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

While most Americans dismiss the breakaway sentiments, sociologists and political experts say they are part of a larger anti-Washington wave that is rapidly spreading across the country.

The article quotes Vermont secessionist Thomas Naylor, who makes his case succinctly:

"The empire has lost its moral authority. It’s unsustainable, ungovernable and unfixable," he said. "We want out."

Montgomery engages in pointless, liberal hand wringing over tangential issues of racism, environmentalism, and capital punishment (on the last point, he absurdly lumps a theoretically independent Texas together with Iran and North Korea, in a desperate invocation of the ridiculous "Axis of Evil" concept). He avoids examining the constitutional merits of secession, which makes this a typically shallow MSM piece. Yet his moderate tone, and willingness to let the activists occasionally speak for themselves, presents the secessionists in an almost favorable light. In fact, he unwittingly aids them by giving readers the names of secessionist organizations, so that these can be Googled and contacted by potential recruits.

Will any of these tiny organizations gain sufficient political influence to achieve their goals? Based on the historical record of American secession, I doubt it. Both the American Revolution and the War Between the States (a.k.a. the Civil War) were instigated and led by men who already held power: sitting politicians at the state level. Those leaders were careful to deliberate amongst themselves to ensure coordinated action, to marshal their forces, and to present a united front to the central government. There are no signs of this yet. If the governors of several or more states call a convention and propose an anti-federal alliance, then we'll know the stage is being set for a regional revolt.

However, there is another kind of secession, which radical libertarians call counter-economics. This strategy does not pit local governments against the center, but calls for individuals and small networks of people to set up a parallel economy. The goal is not power, but freedom. Polish Solidarity activist Wiktor Kulerski described it this way:

“This movement should create a situation in which authorities will control empty stores, but not the market; the employment of workers, but not their livelihood; the official media, but not the circulation of information; printing plants, but not the publishing movement; the mail and telephones, but not communications; and the school system, but not education.”

Kulerski's words appear in a fine article published by The Freeman, "A Tribute to the Polish People". It's a fascinating study of how to beat a modern police state without resorting to violence, which is a game the state usually wins. Significantly, the Poles were able to outmaneuver and undercut their oppressors even though they had no cell phones or Internet. Of the six points Kulerski enumerates, the American state is already retreating in the fields of information, publishing, communications, and education.

The two secession strategies are not mutually exclusive, and it's reasonable to expect that counter-economics will do much to pave the way for a territorial breakup or shrinkage of the present United States. The more useless the central government is seen to be, the more willing are citizens and local politicians to part company with it.

Update

Michael Panzner has posted a thoughtful treatment of this subject on his blog: "Secession Talk Going Mainstream?"

Japan Has Had Enough

2009-09-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

In his article "Japan Abandons America", Robert Morely writes of the impending sea change in U.S.-Japan relations:

For over 50 years, one party ruled Japan virtually uninterrupted. During that time, Japan remained a loyal ally and supporter of U.S. policy. This month, a historic event took place.

Japan has new leadership. In a landslide victory, a new party has done the seemingly impossible. A new freshmen class of leaders now governs the Land of the Rising Sun. The effects are already rippling across the Pacific toward America.

Yukio Hatoyama is Japan's new leader. He officially took office last Wednesday, and he is already threatening to split with the United States.

Hatoyama blames America for the global economic crisis and says that the U.S. is responsible for "the destruction of human dignity." He campaigned on protecting traditional Japanese economic activities and reducing U.S.-led globalization.

And that's not all:

More alarming for American policymakers, Hatoyama has authorized a wide-ranging review of the U.S. military presence on Japanese soil. He is reexamining the agreement that permits U.S. warships to dock at Japanese ports, and has said Japan should take a second look at why it is spending billions to house and transfer U.S. troops between its islands. Hatoyama has also moved to quickly end Japan's fueling support for the U.S. naval anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On Wednesday, an even bigger torpedo hit. Both U.S. and Japanese officials confirmed that discussions were underway to remove all U.S. fighter aircraft from Japan.

It was easy for the regime to whip up a war frenzy against Iraq, even before 9-11, but Japan is an entirely different matter. There isn't even a remotely convincing pretext for branding Japan a "rogue state", let alone blockading or bombing her. She is not just another pipsqueak nation to be bullied and beaten up:

Japan is the world's second-largest economy. It is also America's second-most-important creditor. The U.S. government owes Japan over $724 billion! The only nation America owes more money to is China ($800 billion). The U.S. also imports $140 billion worth of goods from Japan each year.

You have to wonder if the American empire is following a similar trajectory to that of its old Soviet rival. With the U.S.S.R., the satellite nations broke away first. Then the internal provinces revolted. How Stage Two plays out for America, we can only guess, but Stage One is beginning.

Can a De-Industrialized USA Maintain the National Power Grid?

2009-09-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

The following comment appeared on Karen De Coster's blog today.

Clark writes:

Hate to break it to everyone, but I work for a major power company back east.

We have NO SPARE parts for the major components of the distribution grid.

Back in the mid 90s, some genius at the IRS decided to tax us on our spares inventory as retail stock because we occasionally sold parts to other power companies. The solution to this that the bean counters came up with was to liquidate it all. Sent to the scrappers. Millions worth.

You won’t hear it from us, but the forecasted solar flare activity has everyone very worried.

The problem with our grid is that it isn’t the money spinner, generation is. Thus the distribution grid has been sorely neglected.

What happens when we have an electrical incident of sufficient strength at a substation (lightning will do it) is that the coils and breakers at the substation literally melt. Being large components that we don’t make here in the US anymore, it takes months to replace them. (forget the cans you see on the power poles, that’s a residential step down transformer…I’m talking about the big stuff, surrounded by fences)

Normally, it’s isolated and we just reroute the power around the down substation, but if it turns out to be several at the same time we have a major problem on our hands. (Upper Ohio 2003, entire counties were down for over 6 months)

On top of that, the entire cross national grid is routed through only 5 major switching stations. FIVE. Do you think that the sun, with all it’s power, isn’t capable of throwing a wrench in that situation?

Literally we’re talking 6 mos to a year for some of these components they’re so specialized. And if you have grid issues in the countries where they are made, well you can bet they’ll be getting themselves back up before they export the stuff to us….if they can even manufacture them without electricity of their own.

So, sit and think really, really hard about what your community (and the community down in the bad part of town) would look like without power for 6 months.

Above a certain level, taxation destroys capital (i.e., the tools needed to produce things, or the cash savings that enable a producer to buy these tools). America exceeded that level years ago, with the infamous result that hardly any goods are manufactured here. Until now, I hadn't considered the combined effect that offshoring/outsourcing and outrageous taxes might have on the energy industry. Spare parts inventories are capital goods, and taxing them gives power companies a perverse incentive to dump them.

A Starting Point for Community Disaster Preparedness

2009-09-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

Ted B. at SurvivalBlog suggests a strategy for getting neighbors to cooperate for the sake of community preparedness, while conditions are still civilized:

While it is still an ongoing process of refinement, as all preparations tend to be, we took an approach that may well serve your own community. First, we advertised a community preparedness meeting, with enough advance notice that people could get it on their calendar if interested, but not so far in advance that it was forgotten by the time it arrived. The invitation, via signs at the Post Office and Fire Station, and distributed via flyers, had three key elements:

It was to be an informal meeting with no governmental spin or involvement; it was to get folks talking about community preparations for a variety of situations where we could help each other out effectively, while maintaining our privacy and independence, and finally it would include some refreshments. You’d be surprised how many people are drawn by the prospect of home made brownies, fresh coffee and Huckleberry lemonade.

The meeting itself stressed that the purpose was to:

Help local citizens to get to know a few more of their neighbors, and
Expand preparedness thinking from just individual parcels or immediate neighbors to the entire community.

Also mentioned up front was that the meeting was not called in order to:
- Pry into anyone’s issues with their neighbors
- Get into political debate
- Gather information about peoples’ pantry, gun safe contents, or underground bunker…
- Violate privacy – personal or property
- Pressure anyone to participate
- Fill peoples’ calendars with meetings/activities

We reminded attendees that planning was important now:

- So that preparations can be done when we have time, resources, good weather, low stress levels
- So that friends and neighbors know how the community as a whole will respond, before any action is needed
- So that critical preparations are not overlooked
- So that shortfalls can be corrected before an event makes them a critical issue
- Because some preparations may take a long time
- To avoid excessive duplication of efforts

We talked about the various scenarios that might require the community to band together instead of trying to deal with the issue on our own, including wildfire, extreme weather, a major transportation interruption, a large scale natural (or man-made) disaster, economic meltdown or further acts of governmental tyranny.

We discussed the focal areas that might be established to get people with specific knowledge or skills involved on teams of resource planners/coordinators to allow the best response to the situation:

Communications
Emergency Resource planning/coordination

- - Food/water/fuels (consumables)
- - Personnel/Equipment/shelter (hard resources)
- Defensive systems
- Medical
- Fire
- - Advanced Preparedness
- - First response
- Unusual hazards and situations

This would not work so well in a typical neighborhood, because suburbanites depend more on government (practically and emotionally) than do country people. The faintest suggestion of standing up to further state tyranny would send at least one neighbor squealing to the FBI or Homeland Security. At the very least, I'd expect a large meeting might draw a surreptitious observer from FEMA, taking notes of who has food and weapons stores, so that these could be confiscated at an opportune time. Still, if the meeting is kept small and low-key enough, some of Ted's ideas could be adapted for suburban use.

The Evolution of the American Man

2009-08-29T14:51:00.001-07:00

Source: Lampoonthesystem.com

The Insanity Factory

2009-08-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

This morning I saw the following Yahoo News headline: "Healthcare Foes Compete to Frame Kennedy's Legacy". The choice of terms represents not just the dishonesty of the government and its press flacks, but their insistence on distorting the meaning of words to the point where they bear no relation to the things they purport to describe.

Healthcare, in government Newspeak, means state takeover of the medical profession. It's a piece of mendacity on par with defining law as the strong-arming of Americans by unaccountable police and bureaucrats. Yet proponents of socialized medicine, both the deceivers and the deceived, will yammer unashamedly that "we must have healthcare," oblivious to the asinine implication that the practice of medicine does not yet even exist in the United States. Of course, that is the intended effect of the buzzword: to convince people on a sub-rational, purely emotional level that the only alternative to socialized healthcare is no healthcare at all.

I'm reminded of Broken's observation: "An expression or word can be shifted within the pool of meaning to turn things on their heads." U.S. government and corporate propaganda is a kind of manufactured insanity, and people whose minds are shaped by it become virtual idiots.

American Christians and the Beginnings of the Underground Church

2009-08-26T05:18:00.001-07:00

Baptist pastor Chuck Baldwin writes on the little-noticed but important schism developing among Christians in America:

Churches used to be respected as lighthouses in communities: places free from the jaundiced juxtaposition of political correctness and avarice. Today's churches are filled with both. Where once churches stood as guardians of truth, they have now become progenitors of error. Where once preachers stood in the similitude of Elijah and John the Baptist, they now grovel in the image of Joel Osteen and Rick Warren. Sunday Schools were once bastions of Bible teaching; today they are glorified coffee shops and playgrounds. The modern Christian home cannot even disciple its own children: how can it then be expected to "make disciples of all nations"?

I repeat: the modern American church has, for the most part, become irrelevant.

It is little wonder that more and more people are losing interest in the organized church. Instead of finding Christian love and kindness, they find the same kind of gossip, slander, petty bickering, favoritism, and selfishness that they might find at any office water cooler. Instead of hearing a prophet of God declare the Word of God, they hear a milquetoast minister meekly musing the latest self-help book.

The complete irrelevance of today's organized church in America to the preservation of Christian liberty and constitutional government is especially disconcerting to those of us who still have freedom's fire burning in our souls. Where do we go for respite and instruction?

I tell you the truth: there are hundreds of thousands of patriotic, freedom-minded Christians all over America who have had it "up to here" with these spineless social clubs called churches! They are tired of petrified pastors groveling before corrupt politicians and businessmen. They hunger for truth, and they are not finding it in most organized churches.

As an example, go to my list of people who have written me to let me know that they are desperately seeking a Black Regiment-type church that they can attend. The list grows by the day. See the list "here."

These people are not looking to be entertained or pampered. They do not care about social standing or making "business contacts." They don't care which church has the "most exciting" youth program, or how many softball teams it has. They want a church where the pastor isn't afraid to speak truth to power and take a stand for liberty. And, unfortunately, such churches are getting harder and harder to find.

In fact, I submit that the true church is not "emerging"; it is "submerging." As in totalitarian regimes all over the world, where there are basically two types of churches: the organized State-approved church, where people who worship the State go to put on a religious show; and the underground church, where real Christians go to worship God with honest, likeminded believers.

The "underground" church in America is not totally underground—yet. But the schism is taking place rapidly.

The phrase true church can be put to mischievous uses, and it will be, if one forgets that a Christian fellowship ought to be true (loyal, faithful) to Jesus as our spiritual head. Also, I would be wary lest a "black regiment" congregation elevate rationalistic, Lockean theory to the same status as Scripture. Nevertheless, this exodus looks like the work of the Holy Spirit: God calling His people out of doctrinal compromise with a diabolically evil political system.

Baldwin's choice of words is admirably precise. He calls for the church to be a place of respite and instruction. In the context of modern tyranny, this means respite from official propaganda and instruction in truth and discernment. It also signifies (or will come to signify) a temporary freedom from pro-government snitches and busybodies, i.e., the true church is a place where neighbors do not betray you to unwarranted punishment.

In matters of politics, almost all American churches have become irrelevant, except perhaps as shills for the regime. Their record of exposing evil in high places, and exhorting believers not to partake of it, is almost as miserable as that of the churches in Nazi Germany. See Mark Dankof's essay, A New Barmen Declaration for American Evangelicals?

The Regulatory Protection Racket

2009-08-25T04:31:00.000-07:00

Charles Hugh Smith publishes an anecdote from a correspondent who tried vainly to start a small business in a Pacific Northwest town:

A few years ago my wife, 2 kids, 3 dogs, 1 cat, 2 gerbils and I moved to a picturesque small town on the Pacific Coast with a large historic district where my wife had a job offer at the local hospital.

I found work as a chef at the population center 1 hour+ commute each way by car, ferry and shoe. After a couple of years of 10-12 hour days plus the commute I was getting burned out. So when the new owner of a local boutique hotel asked for proposals for a restaurant to replace the failing "Gifte Shoppe" in his ground floor commercial space, I jumped on it. We shook hands on a sweetheart deal lease-wise as long as he did not have to contribute to any build-out costs.

That's when the fun began.

I sketched some plans and had them drawn up by an architect ($1000).

I submitted them for review to the County building Dept. ($300).

Everything was OK, except for the bathrooms. They were not ADA compliant. Newly built bathrooms must have a 5' radius turning space for a wheelchair. No problem. I tried every configuration I could think of to accomodate the larger bathroom space without losing seating which would mean losing revenue. No luck. I would have to eat into my storage space and replace it with a separate exterior walk-in cooler($5,000). I would also have to reduce the dining room space slightly so I had to plan on banquettes along the exterior wall to retain the same number of seats (banquettes vs. separate stand alone tables ($5,000) Revised plans ($150). Re-review ($100)

Next came the Utility Dept. It seems the water main was insufficient even for the current use, a 24 suite hotel, and would need to be replaced ($10,000).

Along comes the Historical Preservation Society, a purely advisory group of starched collar, pince nez wearing fuddy-duddies (well, not literally) to offer their "better take it or else" advice, or maybe lose the Historic Status tax break for the hotel.

It seems that the mushroom for the kitchen exhaust fan would be visible from the street, so could I please relocate it to the rear of the building? Pretty please? Extra ducting and more powerful fan ($5,000).

Hello Fire Dept! My plans showed a 40 seat dining room, 2 restrooms , a microscopic office, and a kitchen. My full staffing during tourist season was 4 servers, 1 dishwasher and 1 seasonal cook-total occupancy 47, myself included.

The Fire Inspector said the space could accomodate 59. "But I only have 40 seats. I want luxurious space around the tables." I pleaded. "No. It goes by square footage. 48 seats, 4 servers, 3 cooks,one dishwasher, 1 person in the office and 2 people in the restrooms." "Why would I need 4 cooks for 40 seats when I am capable of doing that alone? And if the cooks are cooking, the servers are serving, the officer is officing, the diners are dining, then who the H#$% is in the bathrooms?"

"Square footage. Code!" And therefore it went from Class B to Class A, requiring a sprinkler system for the dining room and a third exit ($10,000) in addition to the existing front door and the back kitchen door. It would have to be punched through the side wall and have a lit EXIT sign.

Could it be behind the screen shielding the patrons from viewing the inside of the bathrooms every time the door opened? Oh, no! It might not be visible. The door would have to be located where 4 guests at the banquette plus their opposite companions were seated-loss of 20% of seating unless I squeezed them into smaller tables destroying the whole planned luxurious ambience.

Pro Forma:

$250K sales.
$75K Food and Beverage purchases
$75K Labor cost
$75K Expenses
$25K net before taxes.
Result of above experience=Fugget Aboud It!!!

Loss to community-$100K income plus tips +$20K Sales tax.

Smith adds comments of his own, which boil down to a plea for bureaucratic reform. Like all liberals, he believes that governments have the right and duty to extort obedience from property owners. He bemoans the damage inflicted by the "regulatory" protection racket, but assumes that it must continue perpetually, albeit in a low-intensity, "nurturing" mode:

Codes and regs which make sense as individual ideas become straitjackets when layered on top of one another with no integration via a common-sense, cost-benefit, marginal-value analysis. The choice is clear: either nurture small business and enable its survival or cities, towns, counties and states will see their tax revenues drop in a death-spiral: the more they drop, the higher the taxes they place on surviving businesses, which then speeds their decline into insolvency, which further lowers tax revenue, and so on.

But coercive government is incapable of cost-benefit, marginal-value analysis. Moreover, officials cannot see property management from an owner's perspective, because they do not personally bear the costs of the obstacles and failures they force upon him. Were there some voodoo spell that citizens could inflict on bureaucrats to make them experience even a portion of the frustration, poverty, and shame suffered by all those who are pronounced "not up to code", we would see a wondrous decline in harassment and plunder. In the absence of voodoo, and given the unwillingness of Federal, state, and local officials to repeal their protection rackets, we will see the "death spiral" of governments declining in tandem with the communities they've gutted. And businesses that manage to start up will do so "off the books", in a dodgy but life-sustaining black market economy.

Growing Numbers of Smokers Evade the Tax Looters

2009-08-24T04:44:00.000-07:00

Since the politicians will not repent of their greed and will not reduce taxes, Americans are learning to minimize government theft of their earnings in previously unimagined ways.

From AP via Antiwar.com:

Something unusual is cropping up alongside the tomatoes, eggplant and okra in Scott Byars' vegetable garden - the elephantine leaves of 30 tobacco plants.

Driven largely by ever-rising tobacco prices, he's among a growing number of smokers who have turned their green thumbs to cultivate tobacco plants to blend their own cigarettes, cigars and chew. Byars normally pays $5 for a five-pack of cigars and $3 for a tin of snuff; the seed cost him $9.

"I want to get to where I don't have to go to the store and buy tobacco, but I'll just be able to supply my own from one year to the next," Byars said.

In urban lots and on rural acres, smokers and smokeless tobacco users are planting Virginia Gold, Goose Creek Red, Yellow Twist Bud and dozens of other tobacco varieties.

Although most people still buy from big tobacco, the movement took off in April when the tax on cigarettes went up 62 cents to $1.01 a pack. Large tax increases were also imposed on other tobacco products, and tobacco companies upped prices even more to compensate for lost sales.

Some seed suppliers have reported a tenfold increase in sales as some of the country's 43.3 million smokers look for a cheaper way to get their nicotine fix in a down economy. Cigarettes cost an average of $4.35 a pack, home growers can make that amount for about 30 cents.

Home schooling, home gardening, barter, local issuance of alternative currencies, the Internet's end run around the Establishment's information gate keepers. This keeps getting better. Any day now, we'll be seeing articles on unlicensed businesses employing large numbers of Americans who cannot find jobs in the official, taxed-and-regulated economy.

Why Government Fails, and Why Conservatism Has Failed

2009-08-23T18:33:00.000-07:00

Ilana Mercer sums it up succinctly:

Nothing works in government because there is no private property. If you were given something to manage that you don’t own, have no stake in, on behalf of millions of people you don’t know, and who have no recourse against your mismanagement, except to whine like wimps—how well would you perform?

The larger context of Mercer's observation is the stubborn refusal of American conservatives to defend, without shame or compromise, the right to property. This is an old problem, identified decades ago by Ayn Rand. In "Conservatism: An Obituary", Rand wrote:

One need not wonder why [conservatives] are losing elections or why this country is stumbling anxiously, reluctantly toward statism. One need not wonder why any cause represented or upheld in such a manner, is doomed. One need not wonder why any group with such a policy does, in fact, declare its own bankruptcy, forfeiting any claim to moral, intellectual, or political leadership.

The meaning of the "liberals' " program is pretty clear by now. But what are the "conservatives"? What is it that they are seeking to "conserve"?

It is generally understood that those who support the "conservatives," expect them to uphold the system which has been camouflaged by the loose term of "the American way of life." The moral treason of the "conservative" leaders lies in the fact that they are hiding behind that camouflage: they do not have the courage to admit that the American way of life was capitalism, that that was the politico-economic system born and established in the United States, the system which, in one brief century, achieved a level of freedom, of progress, of prosperity, of human happiness, unmatched in all the other systems and centuries combined - and that that is the system which they are now allowing to perish by silent default.

- Excerpt from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (Signet Classics edition, 1967), pp. 194-195.

Having been a conservative myself, and having discussed politics with conservatives since my conversion to libertarianism, I think Rand was only half correct. People on the Right generally do go on the defensive when the Left accuses them of hard-heartedness toward the poor. But the flaw in their position runs deeper. I've observed that conservatives generally agree with liberals on three points: (1) That the collective, called Society, comes first in order of importance, whereas the individual comes second; (2) That the oracle of Society is the State, which determines when and where the individual must be subordinated or even sacrificed to the collective; (3) That the only possible alternative to this arrangement is moral anarchy, slavery, or even extinction.

The Right and the Left contest the definition of the first point: e.g., is the almighty collective the American Nation State or the World State? They argue bitterly over the application of the second: e.g., who is to be sacrificed to the Moloch of the prison industry, the dope smoker or the business owner? They tacitly agree on the third: e.g., if the State is not obeyed, we all shall be destroyed by Islamofascism/Global Warming. Fundamentally, they are both collectivist ideologies. That is why conservatives do not instinctively defend private property against the State, and why their movement has failed to stop the expansion of government power in America.

When the FDIC Goes Broke (If It Hasn't Already)

2009-08-21T04:22:00.001-07:00

Bloomberg reports (August 20) that the FDIC is running out of money:

Colonial BancGroup Inc.’s collapse and the prospect of mounting failures among regional lenders may prompt the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to impose a special fee as soon as next month to boost reserves by $5.6 billion.

The FDIC board might act sooner than expected after the Aug. 14 failure of Alabama-based Colonial cost the agency’s insurance fund $2.8 billion, and as banks such as Chicago-based Corus Bankshares Inc. report dwindling capital and Guaranty Financial Group Inc. of Austin, Texas, says it may fail. The fund fell to the lowest level since 1992 in the first quarter.

“With the failure of Colonial Bank and the possible near- term failures of one or two more large banks, the FDIC may be forced to levy a special assessment on the industry sooner than it had planned,” said Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, an industry group.

The failure of 77 banks this year is draining the fund, prompting the agency in May to set an emergency fee of 5 cents for every $100 of assets, excluding Tier 1 capital, to raise $5.6 billion in the second quarter. The agency has authority to set fees in the third and fourth quarters, if needed, to prevent a decline in the fund from undermining public confidence.

Here is the extent of the decline since the end of March:

The fund had $13 billion on March 31, the lowest since 1992 when it was $178.4 million, the FDIC said. The 56 bank collapses since March 31 cost an estimated $16 billion. First-quarter failures cost the fund $2.2 billion, the agency said.

The agency is required by law to shore up the fund when the reserve ratio, or balance divided by insured deposits, falls below 1.15 percent. It was at 0.27 percent as of March 31.

The FDIC can replenish its reserves by borrowing from the US Treasury. This would reveal its bankruptcy. How would bank depositors react to the news? Bill Sardi believes it could trigger a bank run of epic proportions:

Now if just a small portion of American bank depositors hear that the FDIC had to tap into the US Treasury for funds, and these depositors feel their banked money is at risk and want to withdraw some of it, the mother of all bank runs could ensue. This could create the day of reckoning that many have predicted. A short banking holiday would have to be declared and who knows what happens from there – troops in the streets, issuance of new currency, martial law? Don’t think those in the Federal government haven’t made plans for such an occurrence.

They can plan all they like. No government rules effectively without general obedience, and that obedience depends on a modicum of legitimacy and social stability. The former is fading, as evidenced by the Town Hall protests and the retail ammunition shortages. The latter will quickly erode in a banking or monetary collapse.

Update

Vox Day declares flatly that the FDIC is broke:

Given recent history, it would appear to be most unwise to assume that the federal government will do much more than permit the FDIC to borrow the additional $70 billion by which its credit line was increased in May, especially should depositors become aware of the increasingly fragile state of the banking system and begin to withdraw their funds from it. Banking holidays and other restrictions on the public's ability to access its money are probably more likely than an outright bailout, especially since a bailout will cost around $225 billion merely to maintain the status quo if Meredith Whitney's calculation of 300 bank failures is correct. In any case, the ability to ask permission to borrow from an unpredictable institution already $11.7 trillion in debt and expecting a further $9 trillion in deficits is not insurance nor can it reasonably be described as a guarantee of any kind.

Guns At The Protest Rallies

2009-08-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

The open carrying of guns by some citizens at anti-Obama protest rallies signifies a stiffening moral resistance to government tyranny in America:

Gun-rights advocates say they're exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protest, while those who argue for more gun control say it could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Phoenix police said the gun-toters at Monday's event, including the man carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, didn't need permits. No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested.

The man with the rifle declined to be identified but told The Arizona Republic that he was carrying the assault weapon because he could. "In Arizona, I still have some freedoms," he said.

Phoenix police Detective J. Oliver, who monitored the man at the downtown protest, said police also wanted to make sure no one decided to harm him.

"Just by his presence and people seeing the rifle and people knowing the president was in town, it sparked a lot of emotions," Oliver said. "We were keeping peace on both ends."

Last week, during Obama's health care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a sign reading "It is time to water the tree of liberty" stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.

"It's a political statement," he told The Boston Globe. "If you don't use your rights, then you lose your rights."

Police asked the man to move away from school property, but he was not arrested.

At this stage, the display of firearms is individual and purely symbolic, and we should note that it's restricted to jurisdictions where open carry is still legal (as it should be!). The appearance of armed groups of conservative citizens, especially in areas of strict gun control, is the next stage of escalation. This might happen if Congress ignores the voters and rams nationalized medicine down our throats.

"If you find something evil that wobbles, push it."

2009-08-18T04:43:00.000-07:00

Gary North writes on the revolutionary effect of the Internet (in particular Google and Wikipedia) in rerouting information, through countless channels, around the old barriers erected by financial expense and Establishment censorship:

Wiki is available in dozens of languages. It is replacing all other general encyclopedias. The division of labor is working.

If you find a Wiki entry with an error, you can correct it using the Edit feature. I do this from time to time. I don't get paid, but I want things right. This mentality is widespread among Wiki users. The articles keep getting better.

If readers of encyclopedias were evil-minded, they would deface the entries by adding lies. Yet this is not done often, and the errors are found and corrected rapidly.

Ideological wars do break out. Then the page is locked by a committee. You have to apply to update the entry. If there were many such disputes, it would be impossible to sort them out. There would not be enough volunteers to serve on the committees.

The Wiki system relies on volunteers. It works. It relies on honest intentions. This usually works. It relies on digital translation. This works well enough to allow the transmission of basic information – more than most readers can remember. Our minds are the weak links now, not the translation software.

The translation software will get better. In 20 years, it will probably rival the skills of a human translator who did not learn both languages as a bi-lingual child. It may take less time than 20 years.

This will increase the division of intellectual labor. It will vastly expand our horizons. Already, we can find out what other nationalities think about such topics as the origin of specific wars.

The way we learn about history will change for the better. Revisionist history will spread. The Establishments of all nations will suffer.

It's especially gratifying to see how quickly the Internet detects and exposes government falsehoods, virtually in real time. Despite the government's ability to set up its own web sites (however sparse and poorly designed), and despite the considerable Web activities of government's fascistic and socialistic supporters, we now have a free market in ideas. Critically, that market is cheap enough to be accessible to any literate person.

Politicians and bureaucrats still control the physical realm of force. They no longer control, nor can they recapture the initiative in, the realm of ideas. A centralized tyranny must lock down both realms to maintain long-term dominance over a people.

North concludes:

The gatekeepers no longer control the flow of information. This has never happened in man's history. Gatekeepers still control the gates. But the walls have holes in them. These holes are widening.

The gatekeepers control accreditation. They no longer control content except where it is very expensive to do primary research, such as nuclear physics. In the social sciences and humanities, it's just about over.

When I think "Establishment," my mind goes back to Rocky III. Mr. T's character tells Apollo Creed, "you're going down."

If you find something worth posting, post it. Call this "post-it notes." It beats armed revolution every time....

In short, if you find something evil that wobbles, push it.

A Brilliant Woman Overlooks the Obvious

2009-08-13T04:04:00.000-07:00

Camille Paglia, a staunch Obama supporter who perceives the ugly reality of nationalized medicine, cannot figure out why her political hero is pushing so hard for it:

....The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.

You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy. [Emphasis added]

What is so difficult to grasp here? The lust for power, for the ability to play God with other people's lives, is an elemental human vice. It is the driving force behind the modern state. Expansion of power by political elites over non-elites is typical and virtually inevitable. What is unusual and unexpected in politics is the voluntary relinquishing of state power (This was the ideological core of Ron Paul's presidential campaign, and the reason why the elite's media shills attacked him when they could no longer ignore him).

Most voters, even of the highly educated sort, appear to have a tremendous emotional need to idolize their favorite politicians. It's akin to sports team fandom and celebrity worship. Actually, it's worse. Fans of athletes and celebrities aren't mystified when the objects of their adoration reveal themselves to be arrogant, contemptuous people.

The Reality of Nationalized Medicine

2009-08-12T17:20:00.001-07:00

Ilana Mercer recalls how Canadian socialized medicine nearly killed her daughter:

A cursory investigation into why Nicky coded that night was conducted. The findings were, conveniently, inconclusive. The custodians of Canada care had tried to convince me that my daughter had reacted to a compound in the chemical cocktail that was the anesthetic.

A decade on, the same precious person required wisdom teeth extraction, this time in the United States. She had forgotten how close she had once come to dying, but the thought of another such procedure terrified her mother. Nicky's American oral and maxillofacial surgeon, however, had no qualms whatsoever about putting her under in his well-appointed rooms. (Yes, we paid him ourselves: ever heard of saving for a procedure instead of going on holiday?) For after hearing all the facts of the case, he was in a position to explain what had happened ten years back.

It took a free American practitioner, in private practice, to deconstruct for me what had transpired on that fateful day.

The subpar care Nicky had received entailed the ongoing administration of morphine. Morphine, especially in a young child, depresses the respiratory system. Administered following hours on a powerful opiate, the general anesthetic acted cumulatively to stop her breathing.

This nearly lethal malpractice was the natural outcome of an inhuman system that forces doctors and patients into a giant bureaucracy, where the individual counts for nothing.

Assuming Obama and his minions force this abomination on us, I expect to see the rise of an extensive black market in medical services, run by moonlighting doctors taking payments in cash. And we'll be glad for it, once we've had a good dose of the socialist stuff.

Getting Out From Under the Dollar

2009-08-12T05:06:00.000-07:00

Local businesses in Pittsboro, NC have issued their own paper currency:

A few dozen local businesses banded together this spring to distribute the Plenty – a local currency intended to replace the dollar. Now 15,000 Plenties are in circulation here, used everywhere from the organic food co-op to the feed store to, starting this month, the Piggly Wiggly supermarket.

Last popularized during the Great Depression, scrip, or locally created stand-ins for U.S. currency, is making a comeback. Pittsboro, population 2,500, is one of a handful of communities that launched its own money in recent months. It reports an avalanche of calls from other communities that have lost faith in the global financial system.

"The Plenty is not going to get siphoned off to Wall Street, or Washington, or make a stop in Bentonville on its way to China," said B.J. Lawson, a software entrepreneur who is president of the board of the Plenty cooperative. "It gives us self-reliance."

Evidently, the Government doesn't yet recognize this emergence of competing currencies within U.S. borders as a threat to its power. It was equally inattentive to the rise of home schooling and Internet communications, until these devolutionary trends became too powerful to reverse. Americans are slowly waking up to the truth that the System's state currency - like its state schooling and its state-licensed, corporate media information outlets - is rigged to keep non-elite people ignorant, poor, and weak.

Aside from his none-too-subtle dig at Walmart, B.J. Lawson is wise enough to see how the fiat dollar robs productive people by "siphoning" their earnings to politicians and their cronies in the financial industry. Now he and his neighbors are doing something to solve the problem, setting a great example for millions of other Americans who are sick and tired of the Federal Reserve's modern version of serfdom.

Freedom is not yet winning. But it is on the march.

Driving Poor Americans Out of the Car Market

2009-08-11T04:50:00.000-07:00

Gary North's article on the Federal "Cash For Clunkers" program reveals its genuine purpose: to drive up the price of cars by reducing the supply. Traded-in old cars have their engines destroyed, rendering the vehicles useless for anything but scrap. Poor people will be the first casualties of this boondoggle due to a decreasing availability of used cars (the kind they can afford to buy), and to a government-created shortage of spare parts that they've been able to buy cheaply from pick-and-pull yards. Beneficiaries will be the banks (people usually take out loans to buy new cars), the largely moribund domestic auto industry (which wants to unload inventory), and the scrap metal industry.

CFC is a current version of an old "New Deal" horror: the government's destruction of livestock and other agricultural products to keep food prices high during the Great Depression.

North observes that Congress, in approving measures like this, has lost touch with reality:

There is no boondoggle too nutty for Congress to reject our of hand. The fiscal deficit is an estimated $1.8 trillion. Instead of watching every spending bill like hawks, Congress figures "What's another $2 billion?" The magnitude of the deficits today is so great that there is now no resistance to further spending, all funded by government debt.

This is hit and run of the poor. It is also hit-and-run either for future taxpayers or future investors in Federal debt, who will be stiffed by mass inflation. Then the rest of us will lose.

There is no stopping Congress today. The last flickering traces of fiscal sanity ended in the election of 2004.

Not Enough Food in Detroit

2009-08-07T23:21:00.000-07:00

Shortly after writing an earlier post about the dwindling number of grocery stores in Detroit, I wondered if I might be exaggerating the risk of genuine, widespread hunger there. I'm sorry to say that it's real. Detroit is slowly running out of food:

In this recession-racked town, the lack of food is a serious problem. It's a theme that comes up again and again in conversations in Detroit. There isn't a single major chain supermarket in the city, forcing residents to buy food from corner stores. Often less healthy and more expensive food.

As the area's economy worsens --unemployment was over 16% in July -- food stamp applications and pantry visits have surged.

Detroiters have responded to this crisis. Huge amounts of vacant land has led to a resurgence in urban farming. Volunteers at local food pantries have also increased.

But the food crunch is intensifying, and spreading to people not used to dealing with hunger. As middle class workers lose their jobs, the same folks that used to donate to soup kitchens and pantries have become their fastest growing set of recipients.

"We've seen about a third more people than before," said Jean Hagopian, a volunteer at the New Life food pantry, part of the New Life Assembly of God church in Roseville, a suburb some 20 miles northeast of Detroit. Hagopian said many of the new people seeking assistance are men, former breadwinners now in desperate need of a food basket.

Hagopian is an 83-year old retired school teacher. She works at the pantry four days a week, spending two of those days driving her own minivan around town collecting food from local distributors.

The pantry, housed in the church basement, gives away boxes of food that might feed a family of four for a week. It includes dry and packaged goods like cereals and pasta, peanut butter, canned fruits and vegetables, 7 or 8 pounds of frozen meat (usually chicken or hot dogs), and eight pan pizzas donated from a local Pizza Hut. Most of the other food is purchased from a distributor or donated by the county food program. Last month they gave out 519 boxes.

Hagopian hopes the demand for food doesn't get much worse.

"I hope we're at the top of it because we'll run out of food, and then we'll have to go out and find some more," she said.

She should brace for the worst. Across metro Detroit, social service agencies are reporting a huge spike in demand for food assistance.

Certainly it's not a Siege of Leningrad style famine. One might fairly characterize this as more of a money shortage, or a job shortage. But if the number of gas stations were to dwindle in a major city, making fuel expensive and difficult to find, we'd certainly call it a local gasoline shortage.

At this rate, if the trend of decline continues, I'm guessing the former Motor City will become a virtual ghost town in ten years. The few remaining inhabitants will be the newly emergent urban farmers, destitute squatters living in decaying buildings, and roving gangs of criminals seeking to prey on the first two classes. A utilities shutdown will be the coup-de-grace, but by that time, with all the individual residences cut off for lack of payment, it will barely be noticed.

Antidepressants: The Social Time Bomb

2009-08-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

Jim Rawles' observations on the unemployment woes of a none-too-bright, working class couple apply to a large swath of the American population: they are hedonistic, improvident, and/or fated to suffer intense emotional and physical withdrawal pangs when their addictions can no longer be fed.

It is also noteworthy that this man is on anti-depressants. He is not alone. Consider this article that was sent to me by Karen H.: Antidepressant Use Doubles in US, Study finds. That is alarming just by itself, but just consider what will happen if and when the Schumer Hits the Fan, and all those patients run out of their medications. (And their booze, and their cigarettes, and their marijuana, and their MTV, and their Crackberry instant messages, and their chocolate, and their American Idol, and their Dunkin' Donuts, and their porn, and their meth, and their soap operas, and their "Energy" drinks.) This could get very ugly, very quickly, once so many millions of suddenly very cranky, very desperate people start roaming the streets.

Antidepressants are hailed by Big Pharma's commercials as bringers of happiness, but they have a dark side. I have a close relative who goes off the rails when he misses a single dose of Abilify. Before that it was Prozac, which was a nightmare. My wife has a close relative who takes Zoloft to keep from having panic attacks. Multiply this by millions, the legions hooked on mood-elevating drugs, and you've got a major reservoir of incipient, large scale madness held back by a very thin dam of paychecks and pills. 27 million Americans! Now add to that a depression worse than the 1929-1940 slump. Not enough jobs, not enough money, not enough drugs. I don't believe any other nation in history has faced a potential threat of this kind. Rawles talks of people in withdrawal roaming the streets, but they'll also be driving the streets - and freeways - in a fog of confusion, rage, and despair.

There's an obnoxious pre-tribber Christian bumper sticker: IN CASE OF RAPTURE, THIS CAR WILL BE UNMANNED. These folks might well see something akin to their Left Behind-style demolition derby, only more random, and they'll be in it.

Federal "Cash for Clunkers" Web Site: A Trap?

2009-07-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck reports that the Federal Government's "Cash for Clunkers" web site tricks users into turning over control of their computers to police and intelligence agencies:

He quotes the following language from "Privacy Statement", to which the user must agree before being allowed to use the site:

This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged onto the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. Government.

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.

It sounds like clicking the "I Agree" button might result in cops kicking down your door, or your bank account being frozen, should your computer contain evidence that you've broken some obscure law. If that happened, you would not be able to raise a 4th Amendment objection to this seizure of evidence because you agreed to let the government search your records.

But it's not quite that bad. Greg at The Holy Cause blog did some research into the matter, and the following are his less sensational, but still disturbing, findings:

The text Beck is referring-to is found at the dealer login, not at any consumer site. So Beck’s warnings to “not try this at home” are more show business than anything else. But there is still plenty to answer for. Here is the actual text:

This application provides access to the DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the United States Government. It is for authorized use only. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy.

Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. By using this system, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion CARS or the DoT personnel.

Unauthorized or improper use of this system may result in administrative disciplinary action and civil and criminal penalties.

Unauthorized attempts to defeat or circumvent security features, to use the system for other than intended purposes, to deny service to authorized users, to access, obtain, alter, damage, or destroy information, or otherwise to interfere with the system or its operation are prohibited. Evidence of such acts may be disclosed to law enforcement authorities and result in criminal prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-474) and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-294), (18 U.S.C. 1030), or other applicable criminal laws. (all emphasis added)

Our very own Phantom Empire

2009-07-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

Singing cowboy Gene Autry (far right) is seized by the fiendish Muranians of The Phantom Empire

With all the malevolence and craziness being plotted or inflicted by government these days, life for taxpaying citizens is beginning to resemble, however faintly, the hijinks of an obscure 1935 serial titled The Phantom Empire:

It's part singing cowboy western and part underground city science-fiction/fantasy. This strange combination of genres gives us Gene Autry, in his first starring role, as a singing cowboy who runs Radio Ranch, a ranch that gives kids a place to go to get away from the city and learn about the West.

Presenting our hero: A generous, productive man who doesn't force his will on his neighbors. Broken would say he's keeping the Covenant of Noah. In a more or less sane society, Autry would be allowed to go about his business. But it is not to be:

Thrown into this mix we find a mysterious band of riders who storm across the range, leaving a thunderous roar in their wake. The kids have seen the riders and now call them the Thunder Riders, which they also take as the name of their club, the Junior Thunder Riders. What the kids don't realize, however, is that the riders are from a subterranean world, the "Scientific City" of Murania, a city over 20,000 feet below ground, which has existed for over 100,000 years when the residents were forced to leave the surface due to ice age glaciers. The underground city is rich in radium, which brings a team of vicious research scientists to Radio Ranch, eager to seize the land for strip mining purposes.

Presenting our villains: A mighty force of organized thugs that periodically erupts from the shadows, and a coterie of scheming thieves who pervert the law (see below) to seize property.

The hero's life becomes a constant battle to survive this combined assault while pursuing his calling:

While Gene is trying to keep his ranch running smoothly, the Thunder Riders keep zapping him and taking him underground, and when he's above ground, the research scientists try framing him for murder. Meanwhile, every day, Gene must somehow figure out how to get back to the ranch for the 2 o'clock radio show. If he ever misses the show, he'll break his contract and the radio show will be canceled, ruining the ranch.

This situation forces Gene to bounce back and forth between worlds. He'll get deep into Murania only to realize that he must get back to the surface or he'll miss the radio show.

Eventually Autry is haled into the presence of Murania's queen, a sanctimonious blowhard ruling over a joyless, regimented society:

"Fools . . . the surface people are always in a hurry . . . their world today is a mad house. We in Murania are indeed fortunate." . . . ."We can never allow Murania to become desecrated by the presence of the surface people. Our lives are serene, our minds are superior, our accomplishments greater."

Our hero, unimpressed, has a ready answer to this exaltation of enforced, bureaucratic drudgery:

When the Queen (pumped with pride) asks him "How do you like our world?" He says "Well, I think the dampness and dead air of your land is more suited to rats and moles . . . My business is singing. I sing about horses and sunshine and the plains. . . . Well, how can anybody sing about those things here? Kinda makes you feel good to sing, you know."

If only our tormentors would dress as flamboyantly as the science fiction villain pictured above!

"We just cannot understand why a normal person would want to go to school"

2009-07-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

Dmitry Orlov translates a Russian news article about a St. Petersburg woman who homeschooled her children, with predictably good results:

When my eldest was in secondary school, I started noticing that all too often he would recall situations of the following type: “I started reading a really interesting book during math class today;” or “I started composing a new symphony during history class;” or “It turns that Peter plays chess quite well – we played a few games during geography today.”

And I started thinking: why is he going to school? Is it to study? But then he does completely unrelated things during classes. Is it to socialize? But then it’s possible to do that outside of school.

And then a sudden shift occurred in my consciousness. And I thought: “Maybe he shouldn’t go to school at all?” For a few days we discussed this idea. Then I went to see the school principal and told her that my son will no longer be attending school. (Afterwards many of my friends told me: “You were lucky to have such a principal! What if she didn’t agree?”) But it had nothing to do with the principal. If she didn’t agree, this would not have changed our plans at all. It's just that in that case our further steps would have been slightly different.

Within the year she observed quite a difference in her eldest son's all around competency and morale:

My son was absorbed in all the things for which he had never had enough time. He spent entire days composing music and performing it on “live” instruments. He spent nights in front of the computer, building his own BBS (those of you who were fans of Fidonet know what that means). He also managed to find time to read anything he wanted, to study Chinese (just because he found it interesting at the time) and to help me with my work in translating and typing documents in various languages, installing email (still a difficult task at the time that involved consulting an expert), entertaining the younger children… In all, he was incredibly happy with his new freedom from school, and did not feel that he was missing anything.

The larger context of Orlov's post is that public school, which excels in boring children while it trains them in rigid conformity, fails utterly to impart the practical skills people will need to survive the bad times ahead.

Orlov writes:

A small but already by no means negligible number of Americans is starting to realize what their future looks like: no retirement, no job, no savings, plus they are getting old. Their only possible means of support in old age is their children.

And so, in the meantime, let's continue to mindlessly send our children off to "learning" institutions, where they will be properly supervised at all times, bored half to death, medicated into submission should they rebel, even by simply refusing to pay attention, not taught anything worth knowing by demoralized, underpaid public servants, and then spat out into the world with their spirits crushed.

On second, thought, let's stop doing that. When thinking about making big changes, sometimes it's healthy to hear of places halfway across the world, which may have their own issues to deal with, but they are not the same ones we have here, allowing us to see past them. But the problem of institutionalization of children and emphasis on mindless discipline and rote learning is the same in all "developed" nations, being part of the worldwide legacy of industrialization and militarism, which we all have to deal with somehow. And a good first step is to starve this mindless suicide machine of fresh cannon fodder - by denying it access to our children.

Homeland Security employs classic KGB propaganda tactic

2009-07-28T19:43:00.001-07:00

A New York Times article reveals evidence of dirty work by Homeland Security:

After federal border agents detained several Mexican immigrants in western New York in June, an article about the incident in a local newspaper drew an onslaught of vitriolic postings on its Web site. Some were racist. Others attacked farmers in the region, an apple-growing area east of Rochester, accusing them of harboring illegal workers. Still others made personal attacks about the reporter who wrote the article. Most of the posts were made anonymously. But in reviewing the logs of its Internet server, the paper, The Wayne County Star in Wolcott, traced three of them to Internet protocol addresses at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border protection. [Emphasis added]

This little caper sounds like a classic, Soviet-style "active measures" operation ("psyops" in US intelligence jargon), designed to foment conflict and destabilize a targeted society. It's part of the dialectical power seizure strategy: (1) Manipulate people into fighting one another; (2) Ally yourself to the stronger faction, and use that faction's support to further your totalitarian agenda; (3) Switch your support to the other side and play them for suckers, increasing your power still more.

Under Bush, the elites, posing as crusaders against terrorism, manipulated the right into cheering for two colonial wars and a domestic police state. Under Obama, they overtly pose as crusaders against racism, encouraging the left to cheer for draconian restrictions on speech ("hate crime" laws). Their agents covertly pose as racists to frighten the left and its non-white constituents, so that they not only cheer for these restrictions but demand them. It's reasonable to assume the spooks will also try to manage the right's opposition to the hate crime laws.

Broken wrote a timely blog post on this very subject yesterday. Conservatives and libertarians must be wary of police infiltration into our own organizations. In fact, we ought to take it for granted. Folks, watch out. Any "patriot" in your group who agitates for insurrection against the government, or lets out that he's plotting it, is probably a spook or at least an informer for the spooks. Keep away from such people, lest you be arrested on some trumped-up "terrorist" charge to pad the resume of an ambitious prosecutor.

Update

For an example of how the Feds apply anti-terrorist laws to people who merely associate with militants, see this article on the Lackawanna Six by James Bovard:

The Lackawanna Six was a group of half-a-dozen Yemeni-Americans from a Buffalo suburb who traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 2001 and attended an al-Qaeda training camp. Some members of the group asserted that they fled the camp after they heard appeals for violence against America.

After the six were arrested by the FBI and local police in September 2002, the Justice Department announced that it had "identified, investigated and disrupted an al-Qaeda-trained, terrorist cell on American soil." President Bush hyped the arrests of an “al-Qaeda cell” in Buffalo in his State of the Union address a few months later. While the president, the Justice Department, and legions of federal officials speaking anonymously to the media touted the Lackawanna Six as terrorists, the feds never dared make such a suggestion in court. Salon noted that “prosecutors never offered evidence that the Lackawanna defendants intended to commit an act of terrorism.” A secret FBI report in early 2005 admitted: "To date, we have not identified any true 'sleeper' agents in the U.S." nor any “evidence of concealed cells or networks acting in the homeland as sleepers."

But the feds did “persuade” the defendants to plead guilty to “material support of terrorism” – an amorphous charge that could mean something as simple as paying for their food at the camp. The feds coerced the plea bargain by threatening to label the men “enemy combatants” and send them to Guantanamo – and to charge them with treason, for which they could be executed. Neal Sonnett, chairman of the American Bar Association's Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants, observed: "The [Lackawanna] defendants believed that if they didn't plead guilty, they'd end up in a black hole forever. There's little difference between beating someone over the head and making a threat like that."

The new Oath Keepers web site is up and running

2009-07-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

Click on the banner image to go to the web site. Here is a list of orders from the Regime that members swear they will not obey, should any such orders be issued.

The following text and images are from the Oath Keepers web site:

Orders We Will Not Obey

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army” -- Gen. George Washington, to his troops before the battle of Long Island

Such a time is near at hand again. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this Army -- and this Marine Corps, This Air Force, This Navy and the National Guard and police units of these sovereign states.

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, peace officers, fire-fighters, and veterans who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic … and meant it.

Our oath is to the Constitution, not to the politicians, and that oath will be kept. We won’t “just follow orders.”

Below is our declaration of orders we will NOT obey because we will consider them unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) and immoral violations of the natural rights of the people. Such orders would be acts of war against the American people by their own government, and thus acts of treason. We will not make war against our own people. We will not commit treason. We will defend the Republic.

Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey

Recognizing that we each swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and affirming that we are guardians of the Republic, of the principles in our Declaration of Independence, and of the rights of our people, we affirm and declare the following:

1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.

The attempt to disarm the people on April 19, 1775 was the spark of open conflict in the American Revolution. That vile attempt was an act of war, and the American people fought back in justified, righteous self-defense of their natural rights. Any such order today would also be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason. We will not make war on our own people, and we will not commit treason by obeying any such treasonous order.

Nor will we assist, or support any such attempt to disarm the people by other government entities, either state or federal.

In addition, we affirm that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to preserve the military power of the people so that they will, in the last resort, have effective final recourse to arms and to the God of Hosts in the face of tyranny. Accordingly, we oppose any and all further infringements on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. In particular we oppose a renewal of the misnamed “assault-weapons” ban or the enactment of H.R. 45 (which would register and track gun owners like convicted pedophiles).

2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects -- such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the use of “writs of assistance,” which were essentially warrantless searches because there was no requirement of a showing of probable cause to a judge, and the first fiery embers of American resistance were born in opposition to those infamous writs. The Founders considered all warrantless searches to be unreasonable and egregious. It was to prevent a repeat of such violations of the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects that the Fourth Amendment was written.

We expect that sweeping warrantless searches of homes and vehicles, under some pretext, will be the means used to attempt to disarm the people.

3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the denial of the right to jury trial, the use of admiralty courts (military tribunals) instead, and the application of the laws of war to the colonists. After that experience, and being well aware of the infamous Star Chamber in English history, the Founders ensured that the international laws of war would apply only to foreign enemies, not to the American people. Thus, the Article III Treason Clause establishes the only constitutional form of trial for an American, not serving in the military, who is accused of making war on his own nation. Such a trial for treason must be before a civilian jury, not a tribunal.

The international laws of war do not trump our Bill of Rights. We reject as illegitimate any such claimed power, as did the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan (1865). Any attempt to apply the laws of war to American civilians, under any pretext, such as against domestic “militia” groups the government brands “domestic terrorists,” is an act of war and an act of treason.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the attempt “to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power” by disbanding the Massachusetts legislature and appointing General Gage as “military governor.” The attempt to disarm the people of Massachusetts during that martial law sparked our Revolution. Accordingly, the power to impose martial law – the absolute rule over the people by a military officer with his will alone being law – is nowhere enumerated in our Constitution.

Further, it is the militia of a state and of the several states that the Constitution contemplates being used in any context, during any emergency within a state, not the standing army.

The imposition of martial law by the national government over a state and its people, treating them as an occupied enemy nation, is an act of war. Such an attempted suspension of the Constitution and Bill of Rights voids the compact with the states and with the people.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.

In response to the obscene growth of federal power and to the absurdly totalitarian claimed powers of the Executive, upwards of 20 states are considering, have considered, or have passed courageous resolutions affirming states rights and sovereignty.

Those resolutions follow in the honored and revered footsteps of Jefferson and Madison in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, and likewise seek to enforce the Constitution by affirming the very same principles of our Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights that we Oath Keepers recognize and affirm.

Chief among those principles is that ours is a dual sovereignty system, with the people of each state retaining all powers not granted to the national government they created, and thus the people of each state reserved to themselves the right to judge when the national government they created has voided the compact between the states by asserting powers never granted.

Upon the declaration by a state that such a breach has occurred, we will not obey orders to force that state to submit to the national government.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the blockade of Boston, and the occupying of that city by the British military, under martial law. Once hostilities began, the people of Boston were tricked into turning in their arms in exchange for safe passage, but were then forbidden to leave. That confinement of the residents of an entire city was an act of war.

Such tactics were repeated by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, and by the Imperial Japanese in Nanking, turning entire cities into death camps. Any such order to disarm and confine the people of an American city will be an act of war and thus an act of treason.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

Mass, forced internment into concentration camps was a hallmark of every fascist and communist dictatorship in the 20th Century. Such internment was unfortunately even used against American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Whenever a government interns its own people, it treats them like an occupied enemy population. Oppressive governments often use the internment of women and children to break the will of the men fighting for their liberty – as was done to the Boers, to the Jewish resisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, and to the Chechens, for example.

Such a vile order to forcibly intern Americans without charges or trial would be an act of war against the American people, and thus an act of treason, regardless of the pretext used. We will not commit treason, nor will we facilitate or support it.“NOT on Our Watch!”

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.

During the American Revolution, the British government enlisted the aid of Hessian mercenaries in an attempt to subjugate the rebellious American people. Throughout history, repressive regimes have enlisted the aid of foreign troops and mercenaries who have no bonds with the people.

Accordingly, as the militia of the several states are the only military force contemplated by the Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, for domestic keeping of the peace, and as the use of even our own standing army for such purposes is without such constitutional support, the use of foreign troops and mercenaries against the people is wildly unconstitutional, egregious, and an act of war.

We will oppose such troops as enemies of the people and we will treat all who request, invite, and aid those foreign troops as the traitors they are.

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.

One of the causes of the American Revolution was the seizure and forfeiture of American ships, goods, and supplies, along with the seizure of American timber for the Royal Navy, all in violation of the people’s natural right to their property and to the fruits of their labor. The final spark of the Revolution was the attempt by the government to seize powder and cannon stores at Concord.

Deprivation of food has long been a weapon of war and oppression, with millions intentionally starved to death by fascist and communist governments in the 20th Century alone.

Accordingly, we will not obey or facilitate orders to confiscate food and other essential supplies from the people, and we will consider all those who issue or carry out such orders to be the enemies of the people.

10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

There would have been no American Revolution without fiery speakers and writers such as James Otis, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, and Sam Adams “setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

Patrick Henry: “Give me Liberty, or Give me DEATH!”

Tyrants know that the pen of a man such as Thomas Paine can cause them more damage than entire armies, and thus they always seek to suppress the natural rights of speech, association, and assembly. Without freedom of speech, the people will have no recourse but to arms. Without freedom of speech and conscience, there is no freedom.

Therefore, we will not obey or support any orders to suppress or violate the right of the people to speak, associate, worship, assemble, communicate, or petition government for the redress of grievances.

— And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually affirm our oath and pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. Oath Keepers

The above list is not exhaustive but we do consider them to be clear tripwires – they form our “line in the sand,” and if we receive such orders, we will not obey them. Further, we will know that the time for another American Revolution is nigh. If you the people decide that you have no recourse, and such a revolution comes, at that time, not only will we NOT fire upon our fellow Americans who righteously resist such egregious violations of their God given rights, we will join them in fighting against those who dare attempt to enslave them.

Miracles in the Dark Years

2009-07-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

Markku Koponen, a Finn and one of the wisest members of the Vox Popoli commentariat, remarks on the prospect of savage government oppression combined with crushing, universal poverty:

On the other hand, don't you think it is odd that we see all these extravagant miracles in the Bible, at all times in history, yet in our personal sphere of influence they seem to be lacking? (I know what the atheist will offer as explanation, and will ignore it).

Could it be that we happen to have lived in almost the only time in history that has largely been without the danger of unimaginable horrors, so we haven't needed them? But that might be about to change. We might just turn out to be the generation with the largest number of miracles per unit time.

(Markku posted this on Vox's blog on 7/25/09 at 10:14 AM)

Can Triffids Be Far Behind?

2009-07-16T03:24:00.000-07:00

Robot Technology, Inc. is developing a semi-autonomous battlefield machine for the U.S. military. The robot will fuel itself by harvesting organic matter including, potentially, human corpses.

Admittedly the three EATRs depicted in the company promotional artwork don't seem impressive. A well-handled sniper rifle might give these robots plenty of trouble, to say nothing of RPGs. Yet they, and the aerial drone in the picture, vaguely resemble the fearsome fictional weapons of Skynet in the Terminator films. I'm also reminded of Triffids, the bio-engineered, mobile, carnivorous plants from the John Wyndham novel.

"Sudomo Strikes Again!"

2009-07-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

Indonesia's Admiral Sudomo

Many years ago I lived as an American expat in Indonesia. At that time, the nation was ruled by President Suharto and his gang, running a theft-o-rama officially called The New Order. Articles in the state-controlled press could be unintentionally humorous, and never more so than when the government periodically thundered against corruption. I recall one headline from the Indonesia Times: Sudomo Strikes Again! This referred to Admiral Sudomo, head of the KOPKAMTIB security police. There was no telling how many billions this honcho had looted from his country and stashed in Swiss bank accounts. But at least the citizens could sleep better knowing that, according to the article, his fearless minions had busted some minor bureaucrat for embezzling a petty sum.

Rod Blagojevich

I'm reminded of the Sudomo farce by William L. Anderson's "Free the Blago Six!". The Rod Blagojevich corruption case stinks of the same elite hypocrisy, the feigned outrage of the big time capos at the comparatively small misdeeds of a minor crime boss. Was Blagojevich fishing for bribes? That is the very substance of the "legislative process" on Capitol Hill. As Anderson notes, congressional bribes are often just protection racket extortion by politicians who can pillage or shut down businesses that refuse to pay.

Given that Blago is cut from the same cloth as these hoods, and is playing by the system's rules, why was he targeted? The simplest explanation is that he lacked "protection" himself, being unable or unwilling to procure it. It's also possible he screwed with the wrong people, in which case the prosecution is an act of elite revenge. Then again, perhaps he was chosen as an easy target for a phony, Indonesia-style anti-corruption drive. The angrier Americans get over the gargantuan "bailout" ripoffs, the more motivated is Washington to find high profile scapegoats to divert their wrath.

Obamageddon

2009-07-08T05:06:00.000-07:00

Trend spotter Gerald Celente has coined the term Obamageddon to signify the coming destruction of the American Empire. He believes we are headed for something worse than economic collapse: an institutional disintegration characterized by widespread rioting and lawlessness, occuring no later than the year 2012:

Fox News Interview of Gerald Celente on 7/5/09

Celente points to the rising unemployment figures as harbingers of mass desperation. "When people lose everything, and they have nothing more to lose, then they lose it."

Claire Wolfe recognizes the same problem. Her article "Preparing for Civil Unrest" presents definitions of four levels of mob violence:

LEVEL ONE: The lowest level of civil unrest is when people turn on their own neighborhoods—as happened during the race riots of the 1960s and the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Level One civil unrest can be deadly and destructive, but primarily to people who live, work, or must travel in the immediate area. Level One unrest is spontaneous, Dionysian, is confined to a narrow geographical zone where the protestors live. Police response may be harsh, but it's localized. Unless you're in the middle of it, you're unaffected.

LEVEL TWO: Level Two civil unrest may also be focused on a single area. But in this case, rioters or protesters have deliberately targeted a business district, a facility, a transportation system, or an organization to impose maximum disruption. One example: the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999; young people with violence in mind and rage in their hearts attacked an entire downtown, affecting hundreds of businesses and tens of thousands of workers who hardly knew what hit them. Another example: This spring, protesters in Thailand shut down the Bangkok airport, affecting who knows how many individuals and businesses. Level Two unrest is usually planned or semi-planned. The target is chosen deliberately. Although still focused in one area, Level Two can disrupt normal life and business in a whole region or country.

LEVEL THREE: Level Three comes when mass unrest or authoritarian crackdown causes disruption at state or regional level. Then, no matter what the original cause or location of the trouble, everyone in the region is affected. Effects might include travel restrictions, random ID checks, mass arrests, food and fuel rationing, controls on money and banking, roadblocks, and other harsh "emergency" restrictions.

LEVEL FOUR: Level Four is Level Three—but on a national or even international scale. It's martial law. If things ever get this bad, it's likely that the government itself will be a far bigger threat to everyone's well being than whatever the original cause of the clampdown was.

At some point the number of jobless people will reach critical mass. When it does, you should already have accumulated stocks of food, water, and other essentials. Rioting, hijacking, roadblocks, curfews, and FEMA interference will prevent truck traffic - America's lifeblood - from flowing to affected areas. Drivers will not risk losing their rigs, or their lives, to put the Wonderbread on your grocery store shelves. Prepare!

Gardening Basics: Harvesting and Seed Saving

2009-07-03T14:58:00.001-07:00

A Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato from last year's garden

Know When To Harvest

Timing is everything when it comes to harvesting crops at peak quality. Seed packets and catalogs will give you the approximate number of days to maturity (e.g., a late-season tomato will produce ripe fruit in about 85 days), but it's best to rely on observation of color and texture. The Cherokee Purple tomato pictured above may not look ripe to someone who's seen only red grocery store tomatoes, but this variety is supposed to have purplish-green "shoulders" at maturity. The giveaway was its texture (yielding slightly to finger pressure when squeezed).

Here is a general guide to harvesting times for different crops:

Harvesting Vegetables

Seed Saving

As mentioned in an earlier post, you'll need to prevent cross-pollination (transfer of pollen between flowers of different varieties) in order to harvest stable, viable seed for next year's garden.

This is a subject I'm just beginning to learn, so the best I can do is to provide links:

Preventing Cross-Pollination of Tomatoes

A Discussion Thread on Cross-Pollination

Another Discussion Thread (focused on peppers, which are self-pollinating and usually at low risk of cross-pollination)

Note: The easiest way to minimize cross-pollination is growing only one variety of each type of vegetable in your garden (100% Danvers Half-Long carrots, 100% Roma tomatoes, 100% Texas Grano onions, etc.) However, there is still the possibility that insects or wind might carry pollen from a neighbor's vegetable garden.

Assuming cross-pollination has been averted, here are links to seed saving practices for different kinds of vegetables:

Basic Seed Saving Practices for 27 Common Vegetables

Video by Clifton Middleton on How to Save Tomato Seeds (Middleton concludes with a rousing libertarian message about self-sufficiency and freedom!)

Gardening Basics: Raising Plants to Maturity

2009-07-02T04:36:00.001-07:00

Anaheim (a.k.a. New Mexico) chile peppers growing in my south sideyard, supported by a small tomato cage.

Staking and Fertilizing

Unless your crops are low growing (e.g., root vegetables, or leaf vegetables like lettuce) or naturally sturdy (e.g., corn, okra) you'll need to provide vertical support for them as they mature. Commercially available tomato cages will support tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. You can also use stakes and trellises. Holding plants upright prevents fruit from coming into contact with the ground and rotting. It also keeps stems and branches from breaking in strong winds. Tomato cages should be reinforced with t-posts, as the plants can topple over from the weight of their fruit. Cucumbers and squash benefit from trellises. Pole beans, as the name implies, will climb poles.

If you have mulched the soil sufficiently, you might not need to water your crops every day. Gardening manuals advise less frequent, deep watering versus more frequent but shallow watering. Test the soil beneath the mulch with your finger daily. If the soil surface is slightly moist, then your plants have adequate water. Plants will require more frequent watering in hot weather.

Keep the crops fertilized during the growing stage. Slow release fertilizers, be they chemical pellets or organic matter like bone meal, are worked into the soil at planting time, and maybe added once or twice more later in the season. Quick release fertilizers (e.g., Miracle Gro mixed with water) need to be applied more frequently, say, every ten days. Research the particular nutritional needs of your various plants and fertilize accordingly. Beware of adding too much nitrogen to the soil, as excess nitrogen promotes leaf growth at the expense of fruiting.

If your plants begin to wilt or change color, this could be the sign of a nutrient deficiency:

Plant Nutrient Deficiencies

Here is a good general site on vegetable fertilizing:

Garden Fertilizers, pH and Micro-Nutrients

Treat any nutrient deficiencies promptly.

Earlier I mentioned compost (deliberately biodegraded organic matter) as a component of good, rich soil. Here is a good article on the subject:

Compost Guide - Composting Fundamentals

Pruning

Some plants need to be pruned for maximum crop yield. This means removal of unnecessary leaves and branches so the plant's energy can go into fruit development. With peppers and eggplants, wait until the plant develops two main branches, forming a V shape. Remove all leaves below this V. Tomatoes are divided into two basic types, only one of which requires pruning. Indeterminate tomatoes, which produce fruit continuously from maturity until the arrival of frost season, develop suckers which should be removed. Determinate tomatoes (a.k.a. bush tomatoes), which produce their fruit all at once and then cease production, should not be pruned.

Use a sharp bypass pruner to remove unwanted growth. Between cuts, dip the blades in a disinfecting solution and rinse them with water. This will keep diseases from being transmitted from one plant to another.

Disease and Pest Control

Keep a close eye on your plants for any damage or discoloration. As with nutrient deficiencies, identify diseases or insect infestation according to the symptoms, then act immediately. A single tomato horn worm (the larva of the sphinx moth) can devour most of a tomato or pepper plant within 24 hours. Sometimes it is necessary to pull out and destroy entire sick or infested plants to save the healthy ones.

Some plant diseases (e.g., powdery mildew) can be treated with chemicals like Daconil. Insects can be kept down by regular applications of pesticide. There are also organic pest control methods.

Here is a web site to help you identify plant diseases:

Vegetable MD Online

And here is a site for identifying and controlling insect pests:

Plant Pest Identification

Insects are not the only pests. Depending on where you live, rodents, birds, and deer can also damage or devour your crops. The larger critters can be kept at bay by garden fences, or by enclosures built with chicken wire or hardware cloth (galvanized wire mesh).

Gardening Basics: Seeds and Seedlings

2009-06-23T08:03:00.001-07:00

Hybrid vs. Heirloom Seeds

Virtually every packet of garden seeds sold in retail stores (and on the Web) is hybrid. A hybrid is the offspring of two pure-strain parent varieties that were crossed. Hybrids are developed for various desirable qualities: greater resistance to disease and insects, higher yields, ability to thrive in hotter or colder climates, etc. But if you save seeds from your crop and plant them, you'll find that they don't breed true. They might not sprout, or they'll have a low germination rate. The plants that do emerge could be sickly or low-yielding. Even if the fruit is abundant, its appearance and quality will be variable, and probably worse than the first generation you raised with the original store-bought seed. Bottom line: you cannot rely on hybrids to produce two or more generations of consistently good crops. You have to keep buying new packets of hybrid seed, or new hybrid seedlings from your local nursery, every season. Given the prospect of major economic disruptions and shortages, this might not be a good strategy.

The alternative to hybrid seeds is heirloom seeds. Heirlooms, as the name implies, can be saved from each harvest to raise the next generation of crops. The key is to prevent cross-pollination with crops of a different variety (e.g., keeping the plum tomato in your yard from crossing with the cherry tomato growing ten feet away) and master good seed-saving practices. I'll address these topics in a future post.

Two highly rated heirloom seed sources (per the Garden Watchdog) are Victory Seed Co. and Baker Creek Heiloom Seeds.

Caution: I've read that some seed companies sell hybrid seed that is labeled "heirloom". Do your research before buying (e.g., ask other gardeners about their experiences with the seller's products) to make certain you will get what you pay for.

To get some idea of the tremendous variety of heirloom tomatoes, peppers and eggplants on the market, see this collection of photos.

Seed Storage

Pay attention to the shelf life of your seeds. Allium seeds (onions, leeks, garlic) are only good for a year, after which germination rates drop steeply. Solanaceous seeds (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants) will last for several years, as will cucurbit seeds (cucumbers, squash, melons). The newer the seed, the better it will perform.

Store seeds in a cool, dry, dark location, sealed in paper envelopes.

Here is a list giving the shelf life for various kinds of vegetable seeds.

Growing Vegetables from Seed

Here is an instructional video for growing vegetables from seed in pots.

My own method for growing tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants is to plant the seeds in starter pots filled with enriched potting soil, two months before the end of frost season. The seeds are planted 1/4 inch deep. The pots are placed on a window sill for adequate light, and the soil is kept slightly moist. Moisture control is vital. Over-watering causes seeds to rot, or promotes the growth of fungus that weakens and kills newly sprouted seedlings (damping off disease). As the seedlings grow, I transplant them into progressively larger pots to keep them from becoming root-bound. When all danger of frost is past, I plant them outside in the raised beds, with some tinfoil wrapped around the base of the stems to protect the young plants from cutworms.

The roots of young cucurbits (cucumbers, squash, melons) are easily injured. Transplanting them in any way which disturbs the roots will often kill them. Plant the seeds in peat pots or peat pellets. When the roots begin to grow through the bottoms of the peat container, plant the entire container in the ground (the peat will break down and become part of the soil). As an alternative, plant the cucurbit seeds directly in the ground after the end of frost season.

Whenever planting seeds directly in the ground, plant several seeds for each plant you intend to raise. Seeds packets often give instructions for the best number of seeds to plant for a certain linear footage of row. This allows for loss of some seedlings to insects or birds. Thin out all but the strongest seedlings, and make sure the plants are optimally spaced so each has enough room to develop a healthy root system.

Rapid growth in seedlings is promoted by applying "starter" solution (a type of liquid fertilizer), which is either watered into the soil or sprayed onto the leaves. Manure tea is one example, used with great success by organic gardeners. Other starters are seaweed-based, like Medina.

Mulch the Soil to Raise Healthy Plants

To help your crops flourish, cover the soil with a layer of mulch (click here to read about various types of mulch and their uses). Mulching conserves soil moisture, prevents erosion, and shields delicate feeder roots, which run just beneath the soil surface, from the sun's heat. I've used hay and dried grass cuttings for mulch, both with good results.

Container Gardening

If you have too little space in your yard for a garden, you can also raise crops in containers. This article gives the basics for vegetable container gardening.

Gardening Basics: Preparation

2009-06-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

A backyard gardener breaks new soil

Here are my recommendations for getting your garden started. People learn in different ways, at different speeds, so you might find some of the following steps to be unnecessary or out of logical order.

1. Assess your growing space for sunlight, soil, and water.

Sunlight is critical. You need a minimum of eight hours of direct sunlight per day to grow above-ground crops (root vegetables like carrots and radishes can get by with less). If your yard is shaded by tall fences and/or trees, observe how the shadows move with the passage of the sun, and select the least shady spots for your vegetable garden. Cut back or remove obstacles to direct sunlight if possible.

Good soil holds moisture, drains well, and is rich in organic matter (e.g., humus, compost). The rich topsoil layer should be at least six inches deep so your plants can develop a healthy system of feeder roots. If your native soil meets the first two requirements you can purchase compost, in bags or in bulk, and work it into the soil with a tiller or a spade. If your ground consists heavily of clay, rocks, or sand, you can either dig a trench or build a raised bed (remember: at least six inches deep or high) and fill this with good soil. My backyard is solid gumbo clay, so I use raised beds.

Water should be easily accessible. Make sure your garden hose is long enough to reach the veggie patch, or install an irrigation system.

2. Gather information.

Experienced local gardeners are your best source of information because they know what works in your soil and climate conditions. Ask them what they grow and how they grow it. If you don't have any relatives, neighbors, or friends who garden, the Web is replete with sites and discussion forums. Here is one excellent gardening web site.

Collect at least some hard copy reference materials: how-to books, gardening encyclopedias, etc. Depending on how far and how fast the economy deteriorates, electrical power might become unreliable (as it is in Third World countries) and this will limit access to the Web. Used book stores are usually good, inexpensive sources for these materials. Print out any useful articles and guides found on the Web and save them in a binder.

3. Assemble your tools

Buy high quality gardening tools, new or used, the best you can afford: Shovels (pointed and flathead), heavy duty rake, bypass pruning shears, hoe, gardening trowel (to dig small holes for transplanting seedlings), a wheelbarrow. Several sets of gardening gloves. Watering can. You can find bargains at garage and estate sales and, I presume, on Craigslist. Keep your tools in good condition. They might not be easy to replace when they wear out.

The next post will cover seeds and seedlings.

Retailers Abandoning Detroit

2009-06-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

Detroit has been declining for years, but the failure of the American car industry has sent the city into a death spiral:

There was a time early in the decade when downtown Detroit was sprouting new cafes and shops, and residents began to nurture hopes of a rebound. But lately, they are finding it increasingly tough to buy groceries or get a cup of fresh-roast coffee as the 11th largest U.S. city struggles with the recession and the auto-industry crisis.

No national grocery chain operates a store here. A lack of outlets that sell fresh produce and meat has led the United Food and Commercial Workers union and a community group to think about building a grocery store of its own.

Where do you buy food when trade comes to a halt? Can you rely on anything as socialistic as a labor union to manage your grocery supply? The basic survival problems confronting Detroiters will, sooner or later, demand the attention of city dwellers across the country. Really it boils down to two options: (1) relocate to an economically viable community or, if you lack the means and mobility to change residence,; (2) start raising your own produce and small livestock. The second option yields benefits even if your city doesn't go down the tubes.

I have no experience in animal husbandry, but I can recommend Jim Rawls's SurvivalBlog as a starting point in your information gathering. Gardening I do know about, so I'll be devoting the next several posts to the subject. This won't be expert information from a master gardener, as I still have much to learn, but it will be useful in getting readers started.

Without local food retailers, life in the cities and suburbs becomes difficult or impossible. If you can't move out to the country, then do what you can to bring the "country" into your backyard.

(The photo of the closed tire store is from the Detroit Daily Dirt blog)

Practical Advice for Hyperinflation

2009-06-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

Greg, on The Holy Cause blog, lays out the strategy for survival when "Hurricane Fed" comes ashore. It is based on his personal experience with hyperinflation in Zaire:

Rule #1 – Don’t hold cash, treat it like a hot potato, let it rot in somebody else’s hands. The key to surviving hyperinflation is to not hold cash while it is being inflated. When you receive cash, convert it to a “hard” currency, consumer goods, or “hard” assets immediately. In Zaire in the 90s, the hard currency was dollars, and the wise quickly converted excess Zaires to dollars.

In hyperinflationary America, holding the dollar will not be an option. Perhaps gold will protect? But will it be easy to trade? Perhaps other currencies? Which ones? It is hard to say, several other major currencies are significantly at risk just like the dollar. Just don’t hold an inflating currency - pass it on to the next guy like a hot potato, let it rot in his hands rather than yours.

If Homeschooling Accomplishes Nothing Else...

2009-06-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

...It will spare your child from the humiliation and bullying inflicted by state school bureaucrats. In Standish, Maine, one of these petty commissars, Superintendent Suzanne Lukas, denied high school senior Justin Denney his diploma on graduation day. Why? Because Denney bowed and blew his mother a kiss from the stage.

Judging from the article, Lukas had worked herself into a lather at the sight of other students possessing and throwing beach balls at the ceremony. One offender was forced to sit away from his classmates. Another was ejected from the civic center by police. Denney remained in his seat or in his place line, not even touching one of the beach balls, until his name was called. Walking onstage to receive the certificate of his completed twelve-year sentence, he conducted himself as something other than a dutiful, submissive drone. He showed a spark of happy independence in the midst of a typical, government-decreed, zero-tolerance lockdown. For that, Lukas let him have it, venting her control freak malice by ordering him back to his seat without handing him his paper.

John Taylor Gatto, a former, repentant public school teacher, has written of the "fiendish spirit" that animates American prisons and government schools alike:

Before you begin to blame the childish for being that way and join the chorus of those defending the general imprisonment of adults and the schooling by force of children because there isn't any other way to handle the mob, you want to at least consider the possibility that we've been trained in childishness and helplessness for a reason. And that reason is that helpless people are easy to manage. Helpless people can be counted upon to act as their own jailers because they are so inadequate to complex reality they are afraid of new experience. They're like animals whose spirits have been broken. Helpless people take orders well, they don't have minds of their own, they are predictable, they won't surprise corporations or governments with resistance to the newest product craze, the newest genetic patent -- or by armed revolution. Helpless people can be counted on to despise independent citizens and hence they act as a fifth column in opposition to social change in the direction of personal sovereignty.

Evidently, Justin Denney wasn't completely broken by this system. Good for him.

Stealing Everything in Sight

2009-06-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

Now the Regime is robbing online gamblers of their winnings:

Late last week, the federal government ordered five banks to freeze a total of $30 million in payments owed to the players from companies that process payments from two offshore gambling sites, according to the Poker Players Alliance, a group that represents the interests of the companies and players.

Well, who in America cares that gamblers were pillaged? Not the Left, which lusts after any privately held money. In their opinion, earnings are better fed into the consuming fires of the Moloch in Washington. Not the culture-warring Right, which loves to stick it to politically incorrect speculators (i.e., those who don't gamble in stocks or, until recently, real estate). In their opinion, moral reformation, like Mao's power, flows from the barrel of a gun. Only a minority, the gamblers themselves and people holding a libertarian view of their property rights, recognize that yet another crime has been committed in the name of "government".

The method of this official crime, preventing electronic access by the owners so that their money can be stolen with impunity, will become disgustingly familiar to group after targeted group of Americans. Broken writes that the rampant lawlessness of the Regime is evidence of saturating demonic influence. I see no reason to dismiss his conclusion. At the very least, I get the impression that the ruling elites believe the USA is heading for a crash, and therefore they are methodically stealing as much as they can before political disintegration makes further large scale looting impossible.

How We Got Here (More or Less)

2009-06-10T05:24:00.000-07:00

Charles Hugh Smith enumerates the stages that America has passed through from prosperity to the unfolding Greater Depression:

Let's recount the chain of events which partly parallel the Great Depression and partly diverge in meaningfully more destructive ways from that previous era:

1. The postwar income convergence (i.e the rise of the great middle class, the reduction of poverty and the relative reduction of the Plutocracy's share of national income) reverses in the early 1970s as the "true prosperity" of the postwar era ends and is replaced by income flowing increasingly to the top as stagflation, globalization and the decline of dollar gut the purchasing power of the middle class.

2. The rising productivity of the 50s and 60s slips to the flatline through the 70s and early 80s, only picking up again as computer software and hardware revolutionize the back office, sales, manufacturing, just-in-time shipping/production, etc.

3. Concurrent with this gradual return to productivity is the rise of finance as the key profit-center of corporate America. As income skews ever more heavily to the top 1%/5%, then capital (productive assets) become ever more heavily concentrated in the hands of the financial Plutocracy. The top 1% now owns some 2/3 of the nation's entire productive wealth.

4. As profits rise (from rising productivity) then the profits flow not to wages (which remain flat to down 1975-2009 for all but the top 10% professional class) but to those who own the capital.

5. As the middle class experiences a decline in their income and purchasing power (for reasons cited above: declining dollar, rising income disparity, and wages falling due to global wage arbitrage) then they turn more and more to borrowing and ever greater debt to fund what they have been brainwashed by the media to believe is "the American dream" of imported luxury goods, bloated homes, vacuous cruises, etc.

The only other mechanism available to the middle class to increase household income is for Mom/Aunt/Grandmom to enter the workforce, which she does in the tens of millions, with sociological consequences which are still unfolding.

6. This advert/media-driven desire to borrow to fund the "good life" is hugely profitable to the money-center banks, which expand rapidly into mortgage securization, derivatives and consumer credit to the point that they come to dominate corporate profits.

7. The financial Plutocracy, observing that actually producing goods is not very profitable unless you can fix prices as per ADM (Archer Daniels Midlands) or gain government subsidies and tax giveaways (oil lease depreciation, etc.) sinks its capital into the FIRE economy (finance, insurance and real estate), eschewing real-world investments as comparatively unprofitable.

Though rarely noted, this is a longstanding trait of capitalism stretching back to 1400-era Venice. When trade became less profitable than mainland farmimg, the Venetian Elite stopped funding trading and bought farms on the mainland. As a side effect, Venice ceased to be a military and trading power. But the Elite remained immensely wealthy.

8. As the tech bubble expands, middle-class investors see the Plutocracy (those with enough capital to qualify as angel investors and vulture, oops, I mean venture capital) reaping huge gains, and they enter the dot-com stock bubble buildup with a vengeance.

9. In a happy accident, the Soviet Empire collapses just as productivity begins its computer-fueled rise in the U.S. In a so-called Unipolar World in which U.S. military, political and financial influence is unrivaled, non-U.S. investors seek the relative safety and high returns (based on appreciation of the dollar) of U.S. financial instruments.

10. The dot-com bubble implodes in a speculative meltdown (dot-bomb), and retail investors (a.k.a. the middle class 401K investors) are devastated. The ephemeral wealth they once possessed, however briefly, fuels their speculative desire to get into the next get-rich-quick game, which just so happens to be "something everyone understands:" real estate and housing.

11. Having exhausted the dot-com play, Elite capital is seeking a new high-profit home. The miracles of derivatives (CDOs, credit default swaps, etc.) and securitized debt (mortgage tranches, etc.) open up vast new opportunities for leverage, off-balance sheet shenanigans and outright fraud/debauchery of credit. As chip wafer plants disappear from Silicon Valley (too dirty, too costly, etc.) then they're replaced with paper: mortgage-backed securities.

12. Sniffing gold in them thar exurban hills, the under-capitalized and over-indebted U.S. working class and middle class reach for the chalice of easy-money gold: leveraged real estate.

13. With the Federal financial regulatory agencies in a Republican/Democrat-enforced somnambulance, the coast is clear for brigands, shysters, fraudsters, con artists, liars, cheats, and assorted riff-raff in the realtor, mortgage and appraisal businesses, who all feed the ravenous maw of the money-center banks' apparently limitless appetite for real estate assets to securitize and leverage in exotic and highly profitable ways.

14. For a wonderful five years circa 2001-2006, the game is afoot and no-down-payment Jill and $100 million bonus Jack are immensely enriched. Meanwhile, the underlying real economy is becoming ever more imbalanced and ever more fragile as real production and real productivity plummet as everyone rushes to the speculative riches of exurban McMansions and malls.

15. This last best speculative leveraged bubble pops, gutting a Wall Street which had grown utterly dependent on leverage, debt, gamed/fraudulent accounting and bubbles for its rising profits.

16. Doubly devastated by the implosion of housing and their stock investments (mostly in retirement funds), the middle class faces the terrible consequences of its 26-year stupor of ever-rising debt and leverage. Alas, the Emperor's clothes are revealed as remarkably transparent.

17. Just as in the Great Depression, to its great surprise, the Elite has also suffered catastrophic losses and declines in capital and income.

18. Having borrowed and squandered trillions of dollars since 1981 on unaffordable entitlements, military misadventures and assorted worthless bridges-to-nowhere pork spending, the Federal government (The Fed and the Treasury) finds that its ability to borrow its way out of its current debt hole somewhat annoyingly limited. The rest of the world has finally caught on to the con, and Chinese university students are openly mocking Treasury Secretary Geithner's Orwellian claim of "we support a strong dollar." The miracle is that he was not pelted with tomatoes and tarred and feathered for making such absurd statements.

19. With the global media concentrated in a scant few corporate hands (less than 10), this pulling away of the curtain is deleted/excised from media coverage in a ruthless campaign of pure "green shoots" propaganda.

20. As the wheels fall off the U.S. economy and the bubbles cannot be re-inflated, fruitless attempts at holding back the tide with incantations (stop, tide, I am Obama/Geithner/Bernanke!) and loopy sand castles (the bottom is in, buy now! Green shoots are sprouting everywhere except in the real economy!) abound. Unresponsive to propaganda, the real world grinds down into a global Depression without visible end.

The chronology and events are correct, but Smith should have emphasized the decline of the dollar and identified its cause: fiat money and central bank-engineered inflation. It wasn't just commercial advertising and keep-up-with-the-Joneses envy that tempted the middle class and working poor into credit card debt, mortgages, and stock market speculation. Primarily it has been the Federal Reserve's steady, sinister erosion of the dollar's purchasing power. Chronic monetary inflation makes cash savings a sucker's game for the non-wealthy. Most people understand this as a matter of common sense: all their workling lives, they see prices rising faster than their wages. They conclude that cash does not hold value over time. To avoid eventual destitution, especially in old age, millions of Americans have tried to accumulate as many dollars in as short a time as possible, through gambling in stocks and real estate. A much smaller "survivalist" segment has avoided this doomed financial strategy, and concentrated instead on accumulating skills, knowledge, and hard assets (precious metals, land, barter items, etc.)

It's A Long Way Down

2009-06-04T21:19:00.000-07:00

Paul Craig Roberts warns of the coming fall of the U.S. Dollar:

Earlier this year, the dollar’s exchange value rose against currencies such as the Euro, UK pound, and Swiss franc, against which the dollar had been steadily falling. The dollar’s rise made US policymakers complacent, even though the rise was due to flight from over-leveraged financial instruments and falling stock markets into "safe" Treasuries.

Since April, however, the dollar has steadily declined as investors and foreign central banks realize that the massive federal budget deficits are likely to be monetized.

What happens to the dollar will be the key driver of what lies ahead. The likely scenario could be nasty.

America’s trading partners do not have large enough trade surpluses to finance a federal budget deficit swollen to $2 trillion by gratuitous wars, recession, bailouts, and stimulus programs. Moreover, concern over the dollar’s future is causing America’s foreign creditors to seek alternatives to US debt in which to hold their foreign reserves.

Uncle Deadbeat's creditors may have been patient up to now, but they aren't suckers:

According to a recent report in the online edition of Pravda, Russia’s central bank now holds a larger proportion of its reserves in euros than in US dollars. On May 18 the Financial Times reported that China and Brazil are considering bypassing the dollar and conducting their mutual trade in their own currencies. Other reports say that China has increased its gold reserves by 75% in recent years.

How does our Regime handle the problem? It sends the Treasury Secretary to make an ass of himself, and of America, by lying to the Chinese. Unfortunately, he didn't succeed even in fooling the youngsters over there:

"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.
His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience....

Americans won't be laughing when we realize that we are stuck with the bill, to be paid in the form of higher interest rates and price inflation. Roberts continues:

Washington's financial irresponsibility has brought pressure on the dollar and the US bond market. Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke thought he could push down interest rates on Treasuries by purchasing $300 billion of them. However, the result was to cause a sharp drop in Treasury prices and a rise in interest rates.

As monetization of federal debt goes forward, US interest rates will continue to rise, worsening the problems in the real estate sector. The dollar will continue to lose value, making it harder for the US to finance its budget and trade deficits. Domestic inflation will raise its ugly head despite high unemployment.

As an import-dependent nation, America will have a harder time paying for foreign goods. Roberts foresees shortages adding to the woes of poverty and widespread joblessness.

If you haven't started learning to grow your own food, now would be a good time.

Persecution, 21st Century American style

2009-05-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

...And it doesn't look anything like this.

A San Diego pastor has been ordered to pay the county government for a "major use permit" costing tens of thousands of dollars, or cease holding Bible studies in his home.

Notice who came after these followers of Jesus. It wasn't anyone from the Usual Suspects lineup of the Christian Right: Arab "terrists", UN occupation troops, or the pointy-headed, New Age, Antichrist thugs lurking in a Jack Chick tract. It was an ordinary bureaucrat, enforcing one of the many tyrannical edicts that Christians typically ignore or exhort one another to obey on the pretext of observing Romans 13:1-7.

Rightly, the pastor has hired a lawyer to fight this injustice. But it's plain that he and his wife were caught flatfooted, completely unprepared for the onset of modern persecution, American-style:

The couple, whose names are being withheld until a demand letter can be filed on their behalf, told their attorney a county government employee knocked on their door on Good Friday, asking a litany of questions about their Tuesday night Bible studies, which are attended by approximately 15 people.

"Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say 'amen'?" the official reportedly asked. "Do you say, 'Praise the Lord'?"

The pastor's wife answered yes.

Perhaps she should have asked the official politely to show her a warrant. When he failed to produce it, she should have requested that he come back with a police officer AND a warrant signed by a judge, by which time she and her husband would already have contacted a lawyer. But evidently this woman assumed that she lived in a free country, under a government that viewed her as a citizen to be protected rather than a subject to be exploited. That's still the operating assumption in almost every church I've attended, and it's not only mistaken, it's pernicious. Today wicked men reign over this land, and to cooperate with them unthinkingly is to strengthen their misrule.

In his book Preparing for the Underground Church (read some excerpts here), Pastor Richard Wurmbrand imparts useful lessons for dealing righteously, yet discreetly, with the agents of tyranny. Here is one example of a permissible stratagem:

You cannot do underground work without using stratagems. I know of one case which happened in Russia. The Communists suspected that the Christians were gathering somewhere and they surveyed a street. They knew that the meeting must be there somewhere. They saw a young boy going toward the house where they supposed the meeting would be. They stopped the boy and the police asked him, "Where are you going?" With a sad face, he said, "My oldest brother died, and now we gather the whole family to read his testament." The police officer was so impressed that he patted the boy and said, "Just go." The boy had not told a lie.

We are not obliged to tell an atheist tyrant the truth. We are not obliged to tell him what we are doing. It is indecent for his side to put questions to me, an impertinence.

You have to wonder why the county official turned up in the first place. Is he a personal or ideological enemy of the pastor, or of someone else in this Bible study group? Did a resentful neighbor, irritated at the sound of hymns or the sight of many cars parked on the street, make a phone call to the authorities? Or is this just a revenue hunt by a cash-starved local government, aimed at targets of opportunity?

There is yet another possibility: A lust for sheer, malicious bullying of the "little people", the spirit of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib spreading throughout the government and its enforcement organs. After all, if torture be permitted, what possible moral objection can be offered to lesser forms of abuse? Logically, none.

Land of the Fried, Home of the Tased

2009-05-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

Will Grigg came across this story of Florida prison employees using stun guns on over 40 children. These "demonstrations" were conducted on a "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day".

Observes Grigg:

No criminal charges have been filed, and although the matter was "reported" to the Florida Department of Children and Families, the child-snatchers -- who are usually inclined to seize children on any available pretext -- don't appear particularly interested in this case.

Cops in this country absolutely love their hand-held electrocution toys. It's almost as if they're competing with each other to find pretexts to burn the "little people" (Bladerunner slang for non-cops). The problem is not the technology; the problem is that cops are now above the law, and they know it.

Unexpecting the inevitable

2009-05-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

AP's Martin Crutsinger nervously beats the Keynesian drum:

RETAIL SALES FALL UNEXPECTEDLY IN APRIL *

WASHINGTON – Retail sales fell for a second straight month in April, a disappointing performance that raised doubts about whether consumers were regaining their desire to shop. A rebound in consumer demand is a necessary ingredient for ending the recession.

Desire and demand pretty much sum up the Establishment understanding of economics. That "understanding" is further expressed in this gem of a statement:

Retail sales had posted gains in January and February after falling for six straight months, raising hopes that the all-important consumer sector of the economy might be stabilizing.

Did you get that? Consumption is all-important! Making stuff is not even of secondary concern. You'd think an editor would catch an error this obvious, except the editor lives in Fractional Reserve/Credit Bubble Land along with the reporter.

The article briefly wobbles closer to reality with this:

The hope had been that consumers were starting to feel better about spending, helped by the start of tax breaks included in the $787 billion stimulus bill. Households had spent the fall hunkered down in the face of thousands of job layoffs and the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

Massive job layoffs, now that might explain things. People without income don't tend to spend as much as people with income. But our reporter is not fooled. The problem, you see, is that those jobless (and soon-to-be-jobless) consumers are "hunkered down" instead of "starting to feel better" about...the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

Then, five paragraphs into the piece, Crutsinger quotes a sane man:

The latest retail data "are yet another illustration that, although the worst is now over, there is still no evidence of an actual recovery," Paul Dales, U.S. economist with Capital Economics in Toronto, wrote in a research note.

A bit of wacky optimism there. We haven't yet seen the collapse of commercial real estate, the upcoming ARM resets, and the tidal wave of credit card defaults. The "worst" is about to get a whole lot worse. But Dales isn't finished talking:

While anecdotal evidence suggests some improvement in sales in recent weeks, "to offset the plunge in wealth, the household saving rate still needs to double from the current rate of 4 percent," Dales wrote. "With falling employment hitting incomes, this can only be achieved by a further retrenchment in spending."

Yes. Saving, the accumulation of capital, is the first step to climbing out of poverty. The message of thrift goes forth despite the Old Media's exhortations to spend, spend, spend.

Saving dollars will prove to be an exercise in futility when the beloved "Stimulus" money, plus a flood of repatriating greenbacks from China, generates severe inflation. But deferring consumption for the sake of long-term prosperity is an excellent habit to relearn, no matter what happens to our currency.

* Later in the day, the article's title was changed to "Retail sales dip raises worries about recovery".

Smiling sweetly as she kicks them in the crotch!

2009-05-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

The leftist culture warriors overplayed their hand in going after Miss California, Carrie Prejean. Yes, she offered flawed moral and philosophical justifications for opposing the travesty of "gay marriage" (e.g., a bandwagon appeal to presidential authority* and the ritual invocation of the US military as the supposed source of human rights). Sure, her appeal for tolerance to the nihilists who tried to smear her was painfully naive. But there's no doubt she crushed some progressive huevos with this morning's press conference.

Would-be liberal opinion molders still pretend to control the public discourse, and imagine they have the power to bury under an avalanche of abuse anyone who questions their propaganda. That was true before talk radio and the Internet. Now an entire generation has grown up with alternatives to the Old Media orthodoxy. Moreover, us non-lefties who came of age under OM's sanctimonious lying and bullying are well and truly sick of it, and more than willing to push back when shoved.

On top of their strategic idiocy, the PC types displayed hilarious tactical ineptitude: they tried to humiliate a drop-dead gorgeous, young, Christian woman who was demonstrably unafraid to speak her mind, and who could count on automatic sympathy from hordes of normal folks who've been similarly ridiculed by their self-proclaimed betters.

* Then again, invoking Obama as a symbol of opposition to the radical gay agenda could be seen as a stroke of brilliance. A bit like Paul turning his Pharisee and Sadducee accusers against each other in Acts 23.

Star Trek: A Triumph

2009-05-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

As bad as things are in America economically and culturally, it’s reassuring to see that Hollywood can still produce good, heroic films.

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek is what Trek movies should have been from the start: a fast paced, character-driven adventure story set in a plausible future society. Abrams employs a hackneyed plot device (time travel) to sidestep 40 years of stale canon and begin the tale of the Enterprise crew afresh. Properly, this tale centers on the relationship between the young James Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto), bitter rivals who grudgingly learn to respect each other under the stress of combat.

Pine captures the essence of a role William Shatner seldom played to perfection, and often debased into parody. His Jim Kirk is sly, aggressive and brilliant, a high achiever whose arrogance and penchant for extreme risk-taking seem almost justified by his abilities. But the real standout is Quinto, portraying Spock's half-human/half-Vulcan personality with breathtaking subtlety and power. As good as Leonard Nimoy has handled the role, he's been surpassed by his younger replacement, who enjoys the advantages of a more expressive face and a more versatile voice. Both characters are enthralling, and by the end of the film you're rooting for them.

The supporting characters are also better realized. Karl Urban's Dr. McCoy, snapping out his lines with no hint of the Georgia drawl, comes closest (as nearly every critic remarks) to imitating the style of his predecessor (DeForest Kelly). His warmth and gravitas convey the big-hearted soul beneath the carping, technophobic exterior. Zoe Saldana's Uhura, a crack linguist with romantic designs on Spock, is no longer the passive switchboard operator. Yet neither is she the type of hectoring, feminist bitch seen in lesser incarnations of Trek (e.g., Dr. Helen Pulaski of The Next Generation). Simon Pegg's Scotty and Anton Yelchin's Chekov are both technical wizards largely relegated to comic relief on this maiden voyage. Pegg's brogue is more authentic by far than James Doohan's. Yelchin's Russian accent is truer than Walter Koenig's in the pronunciation of vowels, but fake as ever in its substitution of w's for v's. John Cho's Sulu is as mild and understated as George Takei's original, but he's given the chance to shine in hand-to-hand combat using a katana with a telescoping blade.

Of the pacing, suffice it say the film leaves you little room for breath, save for the more touching and intimates scenes (Captain Pike quietly upbraiding civilian Jim Kirk after an Iowa bar brawl, Uhura comforting Spock in the turbolift). Otherwise, the swiftness of the narrative is almost brutal. Abrams understands the short attention span of modern audiences, whittled to a sliver by video games, the frenetic editing of TV shows, and the mouse-clickable context dropping made possible by the Internet.

Production design is another strong point. Star Trek, decades late, has adopted the Star Wars aesthetic of a lived-in universe, with many sets and props showing degrees of dirt and wear. To be sure, the bridge of the Enterprise is white-walled, blazing with numerous lights, but its vertical glass screens and closely packed consoles suggest the complexity of a nuclear attack sub bridge, the nerve center of a strictly regulated war machine where spit and polish are entirely appropriate. Yet the engineering compartment is surprisingly primitive, with catwalks, cylindrical storage tanks marked with today's standard nuclear hazard symbol, and a water cooling system. The Federation outpost where Kirk meets Scotty is a dingy military base with peeling paint and flickering florescent overhead lights. By comparison the plush, upholstered, carpeted Enterprise of The Next Generation looks ridiculously effete.

The shape of the Enterprise's hulls and nacelles are a compromise between the original Sixties version and the ship's appearance in the first six films. The new contours may be liked or disliked according to taste, but in place of the inert, rectangular nacelles of the Eighties we see tapered cylinders whirling and pulsating with visible energy. Brilliant cinematography, making effective use of light and shadow, allows us to sense as never before the colossal bulk of this vessel.

My only disappointments with the film are the convoluted plot and somewhat underdeveloped villain. Both shortcomings are deliberate sacrifices made to keep the story focused on the main characters and moving briskly. Abrams needed to sell his version of Star Trek to a general audience while keeping the existing fan base happy, and more important, craft a work good enough to stand on its own as a science fiction masterpiece. He has succeeded handsomely on all three counts.

Swine flu outbreak: Worse than reported?

2009-04-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

BBC News has published e-mails from Mexico on the virulence of the new strain of influenza. Looks pretty bad. Here is one sample:

I'm a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. There is a severe emergency over the swine flu here. More and more patients are being admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite the heroic efforts of all staff (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc) patients continue to inevitably die. The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses. It is a great fear among the staff. The infection risk is very high among the doctors and health staff.

There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes and there is great sadness among health professionals here.
Antonio Chavez, Mexico City

At least one case has already been reported in Texas (a child, whose family has been quarantined), but I presume there will be more.

If the U.S. suffers a major epidemic, fear of contagion might be more devastating, economically, than the disease itself. Truckers might refuse to drive, warehouse personnel and grocery clerks might refuse to show up for work, etc., which will lead to shortages.If you haven't stocked up on food and supplies that will enable you to remain home-bound for a few weeks, do it now. And while you're out shopping, avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth unless you've disinfected your hands first.

A scarcely necessary update (5/9/09)

Fred Reed pronounces Mexican Swine Flu "a media frenzy staged by bored news weasels."

Outright inflationary insanity

2009-03-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

(Updated)

The Federal Reserve, at long last, has made the critical decision to monetize the government's debt, starting with this measure:

With the country sinking deeper into recession, the Federal Reserve launched a bold $1.2 trillion effort Wednesday to lower rates on mortgages and other consumer debt, spur spending and revive the economy. To do so, the Fed will spend up to $300 billion to buy long-term government bonds and an additional $750 billion in mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This is banana republic policy, generating oceans of fiat money to buy worthless "assets" (e.g., bad debt that was bundled and sold as investment grade "securities"). I presume this will kick into high gear when foreign central banks stop buying Treasuries.

William L. Anderson writes:

Traditionally, the Fed has limited its securities purchases to government bonds, but bonds that are bought and sold in secondary markets. That means others, be they institutions, individuals, or even other governments, must first have bought the government bonds before the Fed can purchase them. However, what happens when the seller runs out of suckers, that is, when U.S. Government bonds no longer are seen as a worthy investment or that there simply are not enough sellers to satisfy the huge demands of the U.S. Treasury?

Thus, it is Bernanke to the rescue. No longer is the Fed going to have to be constrained to purchasing government bonds in the secondary markets, and then leaving the payments in bank reserves where they might sit because of the dearth of new investment opportunities. Instead, the Federal Reserve has decided to purchase private equities, Fannie and Freddie mortgage securities, and last, but not least, long-term Treasury bonds, the last being a primary market transaction.

This last move is significant because it unleashes the Fed from former limitations to create new money. At the same time, the Treasury no longer is constrained by limitations of taxation and limited incomes of individuals and institutions that traditionally have purchased new government bonds. Instead, the Treasury sells its bonds directly to the Fed, which then credits the Treasury ledgers with new money. The government then spends as it pleases.

The U.S. Dollar is toast.

From another angle, Bill Butler sees the Iraq War as a ruthless yet self-defeating attempt to prop up the dollar as the world's reserve currency:

What if Saddam had gone through with his threat to accept only Euros, so what? What threat is that to the dollar? Well, since August 15, 1971 the dollar has been supported not by gold or anything tangible but rather by: (1) petroleum producing countries’ agreement to accept only the dollar as payment for their oil; and (2) the US government’s power to tax its citizens and therefore pay interest payments on US treasury bonds. Since 1971, every government and central bank that that has held a substantial amount of dollars and dollar-denominated assets (T-bonds) has held them in reliance that the US government would support these two premises, violently if necessary. When Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, the dollar went on a de facto petro-tax standard. The Federal Reserve still holds the gold, and the US government violently and ruthlessly enforces these two premises. If the US were to allow either of these two dollar supports to fall, the dollar would collapse and the Federal Reserve system with it. If you understand that Republicans protect the first leg and Democrats the second, you know 98 percent of everything you need to know about current American politics.

All the lying and murdering in the world cannot change the laws of economics nor, to put the matter in theological terms, stave off the judgment of God.

Not even renters are safe

2009-03-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

When the owners of large apartment complexes go bust, residents are left to fend for themselves:

Nicholle Krause first noticed the weeds sprouting in the usually well-manicured grounds of her 320-unit apartment complex in Chandler, Ariz., in December. Soon, signs of neglect began multiplying: Garbage spilled over from the dumpsters, the water in the swimming pool turned a slimy pea green and the grounds were infested by swarms of bees — especially alarming because Krause is severely allergic to bee stings.

“I couldn’t even go outside to enjoy where I live,” said Krause, a 21-year-old office worker who pays $827 a month for a one-bedroom apartment with garage space. “I shouldn’t have to pay $800 a month to live in a … hole.”

It wasn’t until early March that Krause and other residents learned why the complex – the alluringly named Alante at the Islands — was rapidly going to seed. The property owner, Irvine, Calif.-based Bethany Holdings Group, had abandoned the complex and a dozen other large rental properties in the greater Phoenix area after defaulting on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.

The worst threat is a shut-off of utilities, which some properties have avoided only through court-appointed receiverships:

In one abandoned Bethany property — the 500-plus-unit Granite Bay in Phoenix — tenants were served notice by the water company on March 6 that their water would be shut off in five days because of an outstanding $64,000 bill. Alarmed residents only found out shortly before the deadline that a Las Vegas company, 707 Management Services Inc., had been appointed as receiver for the property and would see that the water remained on.

Other Bethany complexes were threatened with gas or electricity shut-offs due to non-payment of bills. And staff at many of the Phoenix area properties said they had not been paid for a month or more before courts began appointing receivers to assume control of the complexes.

It's chilling to observe how quickly a central banking/fiat money/fractional reserve system can reduce a First World community to Third World squalor.

Is anybody out there still ridiculing survivalism as a crank obsession? By the time this Depression is through with us, fleeing uninhabitable areas, scrounging, and hoarding will have become widely shared experiences. California already has its 21st century Hoovervilles, like this one in Sacramento.