Labor day weekend

It's time to kick back, barbeque some dead animal, and drink homebrew.

The summer is almost over, take some time to treasure what is left.

See you on Tuesday

Macho Survival

I try to walk 2-3 miles a day. Since I am an old man, I figure that gives me a walking range of 12-15 miles a day if I have to walk out of somewhere. Since I keep to a sedate 4 mph at walking, I would be able to catch my breath quite a bit.

I spent four years in the Army as an infantryman in a light infantry brigade. We did quite a bit of walking. If you are in top shape, and you go for quite a bit, you can usually do 40 of so miles in a day. Of course there are tale of heroic marches where small units went 100 miles in two days, but they are just that, heroic. Being such, they are well out of the range of possibilities of middle aged middle managers such as yours truly.

So I am deeply amused by the macho survival crowd. The lean runners who feel that by maintaining their 7% body fat they will be able to play soldier in a first person shooter and win.

You see, my feeling is that if most folks are going to survive, they will not emulate the coyote as these folks are doing, but rather, they will emulate the porcupine. So I will waddle along slowly, keep my fat on (after all, gotta make it to the next harvest), and bristle with nasty spines (eg weapons) to make an unattractive target. It is not a bad ecological niche.

Righteous Indignation

We Americans will always do certain things better than any other country. Neal Stephenson claimed that the things that we do best are pizza delivery, movies, and software. I guess that I could buy those, but I propose another. Righteous indignation. More specifically, our real specialty appears to be somewhat hypocritical righteous indignation.

Currently I have been reading about Russia/Georgia. In a nutshell, this appears to be the case of three sets of assholes (Bushie, Putie, and Saaskie) all trying to relive their elementary school playground days. Unfortunately, the civilians took the hit and all three of these morons are still in power.

Anyway, here in the US we have been decrying the inhumanity of the whole thing. It really doesn't matter who you feel is in the wrong as the leaders of Russia and Georgia both have the general morality of Tony Soprano. We in the blogosphere have been writing and commenting on the horribleness of the whole tawdry affair. The fact that we have four combat divisions squatting in Iraq doesn't seem ironic to a lot of folks.

Speaking as a doomer (actually, I am a member of that odd subcult, the smiley-face doomers, but more on that in a later post). I am always amused that folks haven't figured out that the big picture range of possibilities is continuing to get worse and that countries and empires invading folks and kicking their ass is becoming an increasingly popular modus operandi in international politics.

After all, we in America have been doing so quite frequently of late. (Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Beiruit, Somalia, Iraq I, Iraq 2). Come to think of it, since 1890, most of our wars have been "Wars of Choice". If you send in troops, and those troops kill people to make those folks do what you want them to do, I count that as a war.

So, I think that while we keep our righteous indignation alive (after all, you dance with who brung you), we should also strive to keep in mind that this means of solving problems will become increasingly popular and learn to deal with the fact that there isn't a whole lot we can do about it.

I am considering beginning a grading system on how well the ass-kicking, lunch eating it is done in each case. I will put together the grading criterion in the next couple of weeks, any suggestions will be appreciated.

If anyone has an extra good idea for a post, may I borrow it please?

A very good read

This guy writes pretty damn well when the muse takes him.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/08/tempo-of-change.html

Gazing Directly into the Gift Horse's Mouth

My ex works at a food bank once a month. Sometimes she takes home a lot of the stuff because they can't get rid of all the food donated and the fresh stuff will go bad before the next week's giveaway.

All that as background, today I am the proud owner of 2 bushels of organic nectarines, a bushel of green beans, and a bushel of Anaheim peppers. A major score. I can't be happier with the green beans, they will be canned tomorrow.

Green Beans a la Fatboy

• Wash the beans, cut of the nasty bits.
• Wash quart jars in the dishwasher.
• Into each quart jar add 1.5 teaspoons of canning salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 tablespoon dried bell peppers, 1 tablespoon dried onion, and 1 teaspoon dried garlic.
• Fill up the jar with beans. If you can keep all the big, straight, nice ones aside and pack them into jars with the beans standing on end (presents for folks around the holidays) . All the strangely curved or otherwise ugly beans cut into 1.5 inch or so chunks and pack into the bottles. Don't go above 1.5 inches of the top of the bottle.
  
• Fill the bottles up to 1.25 inches of the bottle top with boiling water.
  
• Put on a lid and screw down firmly.
• Put into a pressure cooker. bring the water in the pressure cooker to a boil, as soon as it is boiling, put on the pressure cooker lid and process at 11 PSI for 25 minute.

Anaheim Peppers

Fire up the barby and load on the peppers. Roast until they turn black. Throw roasted peppers into paper sacks and let the cool. Peel them and cut out seeds and stems. Put a pound into plastic bags and vacuum seal them, freeze em and you are going ro have some tasty chili.

Now come the bitching. The organic nectarines came up from California. They suck. They were obviously picked green and boxed for shipment. The pits and impossible to remove and they stuck at least two of those stupid little produce stickers on. The stickers were permanent and had to be cut off of each fruit. This is what I mean by the stupidity of out truck farm system. Why they hell would anyone pay for crap fruit like this from California when you can get great fruit off the trees over in Yakima. But the price was right, I can't waste.

I gave up on these. I cut the fruit off the pit, gave them a ascorbic acid dip, and dried them. These will be pies for the winter.

The Seven Billion Pound Gorilla

The world just has too many fucking people. 6.7 billion folks is just too damn many. The rumble you just felt is Malthus rolling over in his grave. Paul Ehrlich is on his fourth double martini.

But, it isn't too bad here in the good ol' USA, we have a whole lotta farmland and we export like crazy. We are also pretty rich on our parent's residuals and (other than oil) we still have quite a parcel of resources available to us.

Granted, we have screwed up our small truck farmers pretty badly, opting instead for a long-range transport based systems out of a few big areas like the Imperial Valley, but oil and water shortages will put paid to that foolishness pretty soon now. We will have to restructure the way that we do some things, but we still have the resources to have enough food to go around.

Sorry for the digression, back to the issue at hand. When you get down to it, the government is pretty much backed into a corner lately. That isn't to say that Georgie and Dickie haven't gone out of their way to choose the worst possible options. But the reality that they and future presidents will have to deal with is that the population is steadily going up and they have to control the people (like it or not folks, controlling the people is the main purpose of government). As the population increases they will necessarily have to make choices between the freedom and safety of the individual and the order and safety of the Polis.

Our country was founded with a population base of around 4,000,000. Add in the million or so Native Americans and you are looking at less than 5,000,000 bodies on the continent at the time the Constitution was signed. That few people in that much room makes for a lot of freedom. We are now looking at >300,000,000 souls in the country. We can feed them all, I'm not sure we can find jobs for them all. Each and every one of them seems to have well defined ideas about what makes up an American's package of freedoms. Not too many of those perceived packages seem to match any of the others.

When we say we are losing our freedoms, we are correct. But perhaps the question should be, not how do we keep our freedoms, but rather, which individual freedoms are possible in a system when there is a steadily increasing population base coupled with a static natural resource base? This dilemma only looks more gloomy when you complicate the issue further by noting the fact that we operate within an economic system that is predicated on constant growth. We may be looking at some problems here.

The real trouble is that with that many bodies and all the individual concepts of freedom and rights, we are going to have some real trouble in establishing what are "rights"and what are mere fripperies. Everyone will have their own opinion as to whether this or that desire/right is critical. The main issue is that there are going to be toes stepped on as individual "freedoms" are exercised. That friction will cause other folk and the government to push back.

I don't know where all of this is headed. It may be that there is not be a good answer available. But I am thinking that perhaps a constant push for "freedom" in a crowded system may well cause as many or more problems than the loss of freedoms.

The United States has a basis of government as "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". Canada has a basis of government as "Peace, Order, and Good Government". The truth seems to be that all six are required, but here in the USA we have a tendency of only looking at the first three.

Blogs and Egos

Lets face facts, people blog because of their ego.  They feel that there is a quality in their thoughts that is worthy of an audience.  Fair enough, guilty as charged.

But lately I have been noticing that I tend to write about issues that get responded to.  It appears that I am playing to the audience.  Shit.

I figure that is the first step in the process of becoming a real talking head, one of those idiots who spend Sunday morning berating each other and trying to come up with droll quips and looking telegenic.  Double Shit.

I'm sorry folks.  I'll try to do better.

Looking at it rationally

I recommended an article a couple of days ago. In "Peak Oil: Mayberry, not Mad Max". Rod Dreher pointed me to an article by Brian Kaller in the "American Conservative". At first, I thought that it was an article worthy of reading. I still do, however, my reasons have changed.

Kaller points us back to the 50's, pointing out that the world oil production there was only 10-25 mbpd ( million barrels per day). He extolled the virtues of the 1950's. Reminding us of those golden-hued days is a sure thing for feeling good. We have the 1950's as the halcyon days of the US. The 50's are the period of time we are always trying to get back to.

So I got caught up in the dream. We weren't going down, we were returning to the good old days. I saw a world where cheerleaders will all be blonde and compliant, American know-how will again rule. Our homes will be worth something.

But let us look at this dream a little closer. In 1960, the world produced around 21 mbpd. The US used 10mbpd (or 2.34 gallons of oil per capita per day) of the total. We produced 7 mbpd of this ourselves. Now the world oil production is 73mbpd. The US now uses 20.7 mbpd. (or 3.1 gallons of oil per capita per day)

So here is the deal as I see it. We have went from using 50% of the world oil in 1960 to using 28% today and I see no reason to believe that our cut of the supply will stop falling. In the 1950's we produced 70% of what we used. We have gone from producing 70% of what we use to producing 25% of what we use (I love the way that the oil propaganda points out that 50% of our oil comes from North America, well folks, Mexico is in a serious production decline and Canada ain't looking much better).

The real tickler is that in the 1950's we were the only rich country in the world. The US Army Air Corps had done a bang up job of demolishing every major industrial infrastructure in the world during the 1940's. For those infrastructures that we did not destroy, the Luftwaffe did the courtesy.

We don't have a near monopoly on money anymore. There are countries out there who actually have the temerity to buy oil we wish to buy and pay higher prices than we are willing to pay.

So, taking all this into consideration, my final take home lesson is this. We will be getting through this OK, but we sure as hell ain't going to be going back to Mayberry. The 1950's were the days of an ascendent empire, flush with money, confident in our strength, and self reliant for our natural resources. In other words, we were in our prime. We were lean and growing, Our average house was around 1250 square feet and our average family was >2 children. We saved ferociously because everyone remembered the Depression.

Those days are gone and replaced by a world of families having one or no children living in McMansions that they really can't afford. The physical description of our culture is that of aging prima donnas and no longer fits our self image as young stud muffins. So it is time to mature. We will have to become a country among many, not the first citizen on the world stage. We will have to rebuild our culture around less consumption, saving money and living within our means. A lot of where we need to be is in the description of the 1950's, but we are not the culture we were in the 1950's.

We are still a good people, and I don't think that the country that produced the Federalist Papers will devolve into a mutant biker zombie wasteland, but we cannot go back to the 1950's, Andy and Aunt Bea. Because you can never go home again.

We have to become adults.

Clotheslines

It is summer and it is raining. Now, this is Oregon/Washington, but it still puts a damper on laundry. I try very hard not to run the dryer. If you are living up here, that gets difficult during the rainy season.

Got me to thinking, how did folks do laundry up this way in the winter?

Sports

My youngest is a football fanatic. I coached my kid for the past couple of years. I played for 7 years (four high school and three at the U. of Utah) and loved the game. I still do for that matter, I am a Raiders fan and have been so for 30+ years.

But the way that sports are currently structured really does have to change. Twenty families drive a minimum of 6-7 miles every day for 12 weeks for their little prodigals to play a silly game. There are no more sports where the children ride their bikes to practice. No, the practice itself is an event, there are parents there who watch the entire practice.

A parent the other day talked confidently about getting "return on investment" on the money that he has spent on his kids sports. He is certain that with all this money and time, his brat is sure to get a scholarship. Leave it to say, the kid really sucks at most sports.

What I want to know is; Exactly when did we become the East Germans?

You guys just gotta read this one

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/08/peak-oil-mayberry-not-mad-max.html

Figureheads

OK, does anyone here think that Bushie in really in charge? What he is is an attractive front-man for a group of people (the Neocons) who have put together a little ruling cabal to force their ideas down our throats. They hired Bushie to front the band, kept Cheney on as his minder, and stuffed the system full of folks to run their new empire.

Now, consider for a minute Barack Obama. He has about the same level of practical experience as Bushie did when bushie was hired as a front man. He is a Chicago machine politician with the vast experience of "community organizer", "Law School Lecturer" and a couple years as a very junior Senator.

So I am betting that the Dem's will attach an "old hand" to Obama as a VP to serve the same role as Cheney did for Bushie (I expect this will be Joe Biden or maybe Evan Bayh). Also, look at the folks who will be running his foreign policy. Zbig Brezinski is a nasty little prick and Madeline Albright will make us look back fondly on Condi. Billy Daley and Ted Kennedy will parcel out the cabinet posts, and I would be shocked if someone from the Chicago machine doesn't get his hands around the Departments of HUD and Transportation ('cuz that is where all the really tasty money is..)

So don't get to too excited about Obama. At worst, he will be an unruly puppet, but he will be a puppet.

So make sure you look real hard at the folks who will really be running the show....McCain gives us the same thing as Bushie....Obama gives us the same thing as Bushie but wearing a smiley face lapel pin.

Is prepping a full time activity

Lets look at this from the viewpoint of our already questionable sanity.

Prepping is an activity that recognizes the possibility of catastrophic changes. More to the point, being a prepper is to recognize that your assessment the possibilities of that catastrophic change is higher than that of the bulk of society.

Good enough. I can agree. But what I am questioning is the status of an individuals mental health and personal relationships if that person is constantly prepping and worrying about preps. Prepping is a gloomy sport. One has to have a balance of fear and hope if one is going to be capable of navigating the storm. I feel that it is important to watch your balance now.

What I am thinking is that I will probably go into some kind of cycle with preps. There are some obvious places where it is appropriate and natural to focus upon prep activities. Harvest time is an obvious choice. As an exercise, maybe you will want to identify the other times of the year where preps activities should fill your schedule.

But I think it is important to have a good bit of time put aside to enjoy the last bits of the society of wretched excess that has been created around us. I don't know about you, but I will miss a lot of the trash and dross that our society has created. I will miss taking a drive, I think that I will take one, I can afford it (barely).

I will enjoy the days before winter.

Sorry about the hole in my posts

It has been hot as hell here. I have been trying to stay cool and that seems to be quite a bit of effort if you try not to turn on the air conditioner. Luckily, an old friend from college came to town and we spent our days golfing in the early AM and then hiding in air conditioned bars and arguing about politics, morality, and other such rot. Bars are great ways to hide from heat.

So let's discuss heat and how to handle it. It is probably going to get hotter. Maybe not, but to me the data points that way. I hope that Dragon is right about cooling, but I would not put any serious money on that bet.

Back to the point at hand. Currently our work is done in 8-hour blocks. You go in, put your head down, and go. Damn the environment, work is done that way. Should SHTF, you are going to be looking at a different setup. Working in a continuous 8-hour block in the summer without air conditioning may not be possible or healthy. Inside or outside, if you are in a 100+ temperature environment, you better damn well hunker down and not move around too much. So plan and waking up early, getting some work done by the time that the heat gets too serious, then napping and resting until it cools down. Then when it cools off enough, work for the rest of the time, eat a late dinner in the cool of the evening, then repeat the process until it cools down enough.

Luckily, this lifestyle will also let your preps get consumed less quickly in the summer. You don't need that many calories in hot weather, and losing weight in the summer is normal, as maintaining body fat in hot weather is not all that fun.

Make sure you drink enough water. If you can flood yourself so much the better. Watch your urine output and character. If you are pissing, good. If you are pissing clear water, very good. If you start pissing dark-yellow, drink more if you have it and start watching yourself.

Folks in the Northlands will have to worry less about this. You folks down south will probably have to start taking up a lifestyle closer to the Old Mexican/Spanish ways.

Nothing here today

Too Damn Hot

In the mind of a doomer

OK..Maybe I don't carry around a sandwich board with "the end is near" written on it, but I have always had a soft spot in my heart for folks such as this.

Let's consider for a moment the long history of Homo Sapiens. In truth, we have been around for a bit now. Consider for example the cities that have been around for a bit. The latecomer Ningbo started in 4800 BCE or Eridu which was founded in 5400 BC or the current prizewinner Jericho at 9000 BCE.

So at best, we have maybe 11,000 years of history behind us. Not really that much in the grand scheme of things. If you listen to the serious archeologists, the species has been around for around 200,000 years (give or take).

In that period of time at best, >99% of human history has been "sub-optimal". Probably all but 1000 years total the main activity of the species has been dodging bad shit. That is how we are wired. When things are running smoothly, it just kinda confuses us.

So, in the last 50 years, we in the West have been living lives that ancient kings would have found wonderful. Now there are some folks that blithely go along without thinking about this incredible bounty. It is their birthright, it is the wages of a good life and the good fortune of being Americans.

And then there are us doomers. We are much more in tune with our ancient ancestors. We know shit shouldn't run smoothly. If we were around in the old days, we would realize that if we did manage to pull down a mammoth, we had better keep a eye peeled out for wolves and lions who would have been more than willing to kick our ass and take our food, and maybe include us in the "food" category in the process.

The other folks are the ones who said "oh, don't worry about the wolves", and now they have gotten away with it a couple of times. For several hunts they have hauled home the entire kill. Kids are fed. Wife is getting fat. They are lashing on another stone spearhead onto their spearshaft and talking trash about what hunt-studs they are.

I wonder where the wolves are?

Snail Mail

You know that as a certified doomer, it is a given that I think that things are probably going to get worse before they get easier. Now, this isn't precisely a prep thing, but more of general principles kinda way of looking at things.

We gotta get over the "next day delivery" phone and internet order lifestyle. The reasons are as follows:

• I can't say that the free internet will last much longer, it is a controlled system and will become increasingly controlled as times get harder.
• Oil prices will gut the ability to fly huge cargo planes at great cost.
• You aren't going to be able to afford it anyway.

I think that folks had better get used to the old way of ordering from catalogs, where you send a money order, and the company sends the goods. All by old fashioned haulage and not very quickly.

The act of doing things in this manner will help things out a lot. How many things do you have lying around that were ordered on a whim 'cuz you wanted in NOW. When you buy something, you are taking from a small pool of your resources and getting something that you decide you need instead of something else. Madison avenue and the megacorps have made a business model of impulse purchases and instant gratification. You can escape.

Make this ability to purchase things hard on yourself. By limiting things to local purchases and snail mail deliveries, you will be getting used to the the way things are going anyway. You will also be more circumspect in your purchases since it will be something that you need rather than an impulse purchase.

Oil Pipelines and Nothing We Can Do

Russia is not playing nice. Currently it is bitch-slapping Georgia and flipping the rest of the world the bird. You see, Georgia allowed the big western firms to build the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline that bypassed Russia to allow delivery to Europe. This construction was started when Russia was in the middle of getting drunk with good old Boris. Oil started flowing in 2005, but Putin and his boys have never liked the idea. The Kurds in Turkey (???Yeah, I know, maybe it wasn't them) blew a hole in it last week.

Well, this should prove intriguing. You can't seem to get too much of an answer when you look through the MSM, they are more interested in the Olympics. Georgie and Dickie are making noises, but I don't see that our dog is ready for this fight. Israel apparently is sending some advisors, but at the end of the day, Russia is LOTS more powerful than sad little Georgia.

And you have to admit, Georgia was stupid. Every hillbilly knows that you don't poke a bear with a stick. Russia was "protecting" South Ossetia. Now, where I come from, even in an elementary school playground, you don't go and punch a kid when his big brother is watching him.

Free Markets

Our current national faith, the church of the free market.

You hear the mantra everywhere. From rich to poor. Urban to rural. The unshakable faith that the free market is the solution to all of our problems. Like Prometheus, it is chained to a rock and savaged daily. Like Prometheus, it brought us good things and now is chained.

But man, I watch the news every day. That this market is manipulated may be debated, and I may be wrong in saying so, but this market sure seems to be as crooked as a three-card monte card game in New York being held on a piece of luggage. The shill is there in the form of Hank Paulson. I would peg our President as the lookout, keeping the cops away until the team has finished fleecing the mark. Ben Bernake is the dealer.

So just remember, the free market does not reside on the trading floors of stock exchanges. When you actually read Adam Smith, his distrust and contempt of corporations shows through clearly. I can't remember the exact quote (and there is no way on Gods green earth anyone could, short of gunpoint, force me to read the the Wealth of Nations again) is that Smith felt that corporations , whenever they got together, cheated the public.

No, we are so far away from Smith's free market that it is absurd. The free market in America can be found at flea markets and hippie get togethers. The rest of the mess is nothing but government sponsored looting by corporations.

As preppers, we have to come to grips with the concept and execution of the market. The financial will be the first domino to drop. If it drops then the monetary, government, and social dominoes may well fall after the financials. So we have to keep an eye on the "market" but only in the sense that you have to stay out of the way of the bus.

Laying Bets on the Oil Futures Market

Been thinking about a conversation that I had with a civilized lurker. (PS..Lurker, if you are still there, shoot me an e-mail, while I have driven the craven from my temple, my actions have unfortunately banished you as well. If you send e-mail, I will be happy to get any comments that you wish to make on the page).

The bet began this way:

We shall see what happens, but if oil doesn't drop below $100/barrel by this time next year, even in our newly devalued dollars, I'll send you a silver eagle!

Now, I realized that I bet too quickly. What I should have bet is that the price would be >$100.00 this time next year.

Anyway, Lurker and I placed a bet on the future price of oil. A silver eagle hangs in the balance. He says that it will be<$100 before next July. I said no.

This isn't to say that I don't think that the price of oil will be dropping in the near future. Remember folks, we have and election coming and the scummies in congress are doing everything to claw back the price of oil so that they can keep their do-nothing jobs. I think that this current government (and other administrations, but to a much lesser extent) is doing every manipulation that I can to keep the mess together so that their corporate buddies can finish their looting.

So, I am betting on ~$100 a barrel oil by November, then the price will go back up fairly quickly and settle into a slow upward crawl. The amount of oil that we will have available is dropping, short term manipulations cannot beat supply and demand. Prices will be going up.

I might have to pay off the eagle, but we will see. But I probably should have been more precise about the wording of the bet. I just hope that it stops above $100.00.

Eagles are just too pretty to lose.

Caffeine and the New World Order

If you guys are like me, you are not worth very much unless you get a couple of cups of coffee into yourself in the morning. I do drink tea about every third morning to keep my stomach from exploding.

Now, the US imports about nineteen million 60 kilo bags every year which when you put the old calculator to work, gives you 2,508,000,000 pounds a year. The US consumes about 7.9 pounds of coffee per person per year. At a 300,000,000 population you get 2,370,000,000 pounds a year. So my friends, it looks like a statistical dead heat between imports and consumption.

Now, I am not going to do the same for tea, but as not too many of us run tea plantations, I am going to assume that the numbers are similar.

Now, SHTF. If

1. the bad juju that is happening at the banks, and
   
2. either one of the two morons running for president are elected, and
   
3. our legislative branch performs its usual feat of managing to get itself re-elected without having managed to improve anything anywhere.

then the dollar and economy will probably not improve. At some point, the availability of coffee and tea as imports will become less and less, which means prices will increase.

I am torn about how to approach this. Do I carpe diem and drink all the coffee that I want and if the bust occurs go off cold turkey? Do I start ramping back now, knowing that cold turkey usually does suck? Do I start storing coffee in with the rest of my preps....hell who knows, it might turm out to be good trade goods.

True Believers and Ad Hominem Atttacks

One of the crazy parts about blogging is how thick a skin one must have to continue. Here I am, a yutz from nowhere, just writing about the ideas and thoughts I have. I don't make any coin from this, I don't have a place at any show on Sunday morning.

These are just ideas. They might be wrong, they might be right. All I am doing is trying to come up with a way to wrap my own head around this thorny set of problems that we call life.

Well, I am sick of whenever I posit an idea, getting ripped into by some guy for not having the same opinion as he does.

It appears that I can solve the problem by getting rid of the anonymous comment feature.

Guess what?

Class War

This is a simple set of questions.

• Why is it in America, the rich and the corporations can use the means at their disposal to control and profit from the masses it is labeled as part and parcel of capitalism and is defended.
• When the masses use the means that they have available to control the corporations and the wealthy it is called "class warfare"?
  

You might want to check this out

Death of Free Internet is Imminent

Canada Will Become Test Case

By Kevin Parkinson

21/07/08 "Global Research" -- - In the last 15 years or so, as a society we have had access to more information than ever before in modern history because of the Internet. There are approximately 1 billion Internet users in the world B and any one of these users can theoretically communicate in real time with any other on the planet. The Internet has been the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century by far, and has been recognized as such by the global community.

The free transfer of information, uncensored, unlimited and untainted, still seems to be a dream when you think about it. Whatever field that is mentioned- education, commerce, government, news, entertainment, politics and countless other areas- have been radically affected by the introduction of the Internet. And mostly, it's good news, except when poor judgements are made and people are taken advantage of. Scrutiny and oversight are needed, especially where children are involved.

However, when there are potential profits open to a corporation, the needs of society don't count. Take the recent case in Canada with the behemoths, Telus and Rogers rolling out a charge for text messaging without any warning to the public. It was an arrogant and risky move for the telecommunications giants because it backfired. People actually used Internet technology to deliver a loud and clear message to these companies and that was to scrap the extra charge. The people used the power of the Internet against the big boys and the little guys won.

However, the issue of text messaging is just a tiny blip on the radar screens of Telus and another company, Bell Canada, the two largest Internet Service Providers (ISP'S) in Canada. Our country is being used as a test case to drastically change the delivery of Internet service forever. The change will be so radical that it has the potential to send us back to the horse and buggy days of information sharing and access.

In the upcoming weeks watch for a report in Time Magazine that will attempt to smooth over the rough edges of a diabolical plot by Bell Canada and Telus, to begin charging per site fees on most Internet sites. The plan is to convert the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and then pay to visit sites beyond a cutoff point.

From my browsing (on the currently free Internet) I have discovered that the 'demise' of the free Internet is slated for 2010 in Canada, and two years later around the world. Canada is seen a good choice to implement such shameful and sinister changes, since Canadians are viewed as being laissez fair, politically uninformed and an easy target. The corporate marauders will iron out the wrinkles in Canada and then spring the new, castrated version of the Internet on the rest of the world, probably with little fanfare, except for some dire warnings about the 'evil' of the Internet (free) and the CEO's spouting about 'safety and security'. These buzzwords usually work pretty well.

What will the Internet look like in Canada in 2010? I suspect that the ISP's will provide a "package" program as companies like Cogeco currently do. Customers will pay for a series of websites as they do now for their television stations. Television stations will be available on-line as part of these packages, which will make the networks happy since they have lost much of the younger market which are surfing and chatting on their computers in the evening. However, as is the case with cable television now, if you choose something that is not part of the package, you know what happens. You pay extra.

And this is where the Internet (free) as we know it will suffer almost immediate, economic strangulation. Thousands and thousands of Internet sites will not be part of the package so users will have to pay extra to visit those sites! In just an hour or two it is possible to easily visit 20-30 sites or more while looking for information. Just imagine how high these costs will be.

At present, the world condemns China because that country restricts certain websites. "They are undemocratic; they are removing people's freedom; they don't respect individual rights; they are censoring information,” are some of the comments we hear. But what Bell Canada and Telus have planned for Canadians is much worse than that. They are planning the death of the Internet (free) as we know it, and I expect they'll be hardly a whimper from Canadians. It's all part of the corporate plan for a New World Order and virtually a masterstroke that will lead to the creation of billions and billions of dollars of corporate profit at the expense of the working and middle classes.

There are so many other implications as a result of these changes, far too many to elaborate on here. Be aware that we will all lose our privacy because all websites will be tracked as part of the billing procedure, and we will be literally cut off from 90% of the information that we can access today. The little guys on the Net will fall likes flies; Bloggers and small website operators will die a quick death because people will not pay to go to their sites and read their pages.

Ironically, the only medium that can save us is the one we are trying to save- the Internet (free). This article will be posted on my Blog, www.realitycheck.typepad.com and I encourage people and groups to learn more about this issue. Canadians can keep the Internet free just as they kept text messaging free. Don't wait for the federal politicians. They will do nothing to help us.

I would welcome a letter to the editor of the Standard Freeholder from a spokesperson from Bell Canada or Telus telling me that I am absolutely wrong in what I have written, and that no such changes to the Internet are being planned, and that access to Internet sites will remain FREE in the years to come. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to write to the media, ask questions, phone the radio station, phone a friend, or think of something else to prevent what appears to me to be inevitable.

Maintaining Internet (free) access is the only way we have a chance at combatting the global corporate takeover, the North American Union, and a long list of other deadly deeds that the elite in society have planned for us. Yesterday was too late in trying to protect our rights and freedoms. We must now redouble our efforts in order to give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance in the future.

Author's website: http://realitycheck.typepad.com/

Trust

At the end of the day, you have to trust someone. Nearly every human interaction depends on trust. I think that the reason that I have such antipathy toward the rich and the corporations and the government is that I cannot think of a time that they have not abused the trust extended to them.

That the government lies to us is taken for granted in the crowd that reads the drivel that I write. I cannot imagine anyone who is incapable of listing ten to twenty government lies while continuing to read this screed.

I do not doubt that the same can be said for the corporations. But, we must be honest here, there are corporations out there who have proven themselves worthy of our trust. Another exercise, list three (at a minimum). But what I keep finding is that they are not usually national-level companies, and to be honest, I was incapable of thinking of a single trans-national that has proven itself worthy of trust. If someone could remind me of one, I would be very grateful.

The real problem for me is at the level of rich individuals. There are friends and family in that group. People who have done well by others. My real problem with them is that they are the folks supporting the evil. A rich person without defense stocks? A rich person standing up to upbraid a crooked CEO of a bank? No, what usually happens is that the rich take their profits as shareholders and really do not consider the evil that their money does when it is out of sight in their bank accounts.

So, getting back to the tax issues, and taking this rant into consideration, the reason that I tend to be angry at the rich is that they have used their money to feed the corrupt and dangerous system that we developed here in the US. Their retirement to golfing and crafting heaven depend on the continued and expanded corruption of the system.

I will be given sterling examples of where this is not true, but they will be sparse, and the rich spoken of will really not be all that rich.

So, if a person makes and or keeps his fortune:

• in a corrupt system that is based on the accumulation of wealth at the expense of those of poor or moderate means
• Is predicated on the continuing centralization and empowerment of a corporate oligarchy
• Who does not use his ownership share of corporations to try to curtail their immoral and rapacious behaviors.
  

Is that person worthy of your trust?

Income taxes

OK...this is gonna piss off a lot of folks. But remember, this is a pipe dream, because congress will never pass a tax that does not cater to the wealthy and the Oligarchy of Corporate Interests (OCI).

We need to bring back the tax system of the 1940's-1970's. You know, the one where if you got a lot of money, the government taxed your ass raw. If I remember right, I think that the top rate was 70% on the wealthy.

Now....before you break out the tar, feathers, and rope, hear me out. I think that the current tax rate (low) is a way to let the wealthy gain power at the expense of the less-than-wealthy. If you allow rich folk to keep too much of their money, they invariably start using it to buy the government to use for their own purposes.

So, here is my proposal. I propose that we set a maximum rate for all income taxes, local, state, federal. Local gets 15% of the total taxes, States get 30% of the total taxes, and feds get 55% of the total taxes. There are no deductions, there are no payroll taxes, there are not different types of income, capital gains are taxed the same as the income. This percentage is the amount that is deducted from your paycheck, period.

• <$8,000 per year income = no taxes $8001 to $20,000 = 5% of total income
• $20,001 to $50,000 = 15% of total income
  
• $50,001 to $100,000 = 20% of total income
  
• $100,001 to $250,000 = 30% of total income
  
• $250,001 to $1,000,000 = 40% of total income
  
• > $1,000,001 = 60% of total income

I will say this flat out. I want to do this to cripple the ability of the rich to buy the government they want.

I also propose a similar income tax on corporations. The corporations will be taxed on revenue. No exemptions, no fancy accounting. Revenue, Period. If you get a check for a dollar, you pay taxes on a dollar.

• <$100,000 net sales =5% of net receipts.
• $100,001 to $500,000 = 10% on net receipts
  
• $500,001 to $1,000,000 =15% of net receipts
  
• $1,000,001 to $10,000,000 = 20% of net receipts
  
• >10,000,001 = 30% of net receipts

There will be no taxes on interest income.

The rich aren't our friends. They have usually (there are exceptions) got rich by exploiting either people or tax laws or buying privilege from the government. Cripple their ability to write the rules in their favor.

Bank Bashing

You all know my opinion about banks, and I hope that you realize that the hatred and loathing also reach to Major stockbrokers and hedge funds. They are the root of the infection that is on the verge of sending our country into the ICU. The greed of the senior members of this society of scum bags takes the cake. They put the money that is put into their "safekeeping" into the riskiest possible investments to make money so that they can pay their inflated salaries and bonuses.

Merrill Lynch loses 10 billion dollars, their CEO gets paid 15,000,000. The same man led Merrill Lynch to announce that it is taking yet another big write down on its subprime securities, selling paper with a face value of US$30.6 billion to private equity firm Lone Star for $6.7 billion. It will dilute its common stock 38% through the sale of additional shares to make up the losses.

Citigroups's Vikram Pandit gets $165 million for the sale his hedge fund to his employer and then goes out an loses an incredible amount of money.

These scum have been sucking the country dry. They make huge, risky deals with other peoples money in order to take huge sums home to their Hampton estates and second homes in Vail. They are not required to give anything back when they lose and they make sure they are grossly overcompensated when they make any positive headway, no matter how trivial of contrived.

Large corporations are no better. The overpay themselves to move other American's jobs to China. They gut the productive capacity of the country to pay themselves bonuses and to play high priest at the shibboleth of "shareholder value".

Folks, we started out as a Republic. We tore apart that Republic to emplace a democracy. Which through its own neglect and greed allowed an oligarchy to take control.

We are ruled by the wealthy, by a overweeening and self-interested group of immoral men and women with no thought of anything but their own "compensation packages". They buy and sell Presidential candidates and have so demeaned the office that it it is now indistinguishable from the office of student body president at your local high school.

Congress is even worse, they really are the "Parliment of Whores" so well described by P.J. O Rourke.

Until the country breaks the grip of these greedy monsters and their chokehold on the political culture of our country, we will remain paralyzed. Our country will be sold off piece by piece to the rich of other countries, purchased with the dollars that we gave these people for oil to slake our incessant thirst.

The country has to break. It has to break down and we have to destroy to power elites that are running the country for their own benefit. When we do that, we will be significantly poorer in a financial sense, but richer in freedom.

Sundays

I'm not writing on Sunday anymore.

Just because.

See you tomorrow

Blackberries and Peaches

There is nothing better than U-pick orchards. About three miles from the house we have one with peaches. So me and the boys are traipsing there today with 20 bucks and some time. One of the best deals in the world. I have put the youngest onto task of telling me how to dry (don't worry, I already know, but any parent knows that words coming out of a parents mouth carry a little more weight if they match something found in a book).

So peach pies for the winter...and don't kid yourself my friends, peach pies made with dried peaches are as good if not better than fresh peach pie. You have to be careful and soak them in just barely enough water, but you can put the spices and some of the sugar in the soaking water and the peaches suck up the good flavor.....yum.

Blackberries are out too. After we finish the peaches, we are heading out for blackberries. One of the great things about living in the northwest is that blackberries are nothing but bloody weeds. But for about a month every year you can pick and eat blackberries to your hearts content. Blackberry cobbler is my son's specialty. The key to the recipe is the cardamom.

Storing blackberries isn't quite as easy. They are too fragile to dry really well, so we freeze 'em. You go out and pick them, them you rinse them off well, then you lay them on a big cookie sheet that has the bottom covered with wax paper and into the freezer they go. when they are frozen all the way through, they go into a gallon zip-lock. You have to pick every day for a week or so this way if you want to get through the winter, but it isn't a huge problem.

Gabe's Blackberry Cobbler

A half cup of butter
A cup of flour
A cup of sugar
A healthy pinch of salt
a half teaspoon of cardomom
Two thirds of a cup of buttermilk.
a pound or two of blackberries

Preheat the oven to 350F or 175C

Melt the butter in a 2 quart casserole. Leave it there.

Mix all of the dry ingredients above in a bowl, then when it is well mixed, (don't be shy about the mixing, I really do mean mix it thoroughly) then dump in the buttermilk and stir it until it is well mixed, then dump it into the melted butter in the casserole.

Pour the blackberries over the top of the dough in the casserole. Shove it into the oven and bake it for around 45 minutes. Serve it as hot as you can stand it. Ice cream doesn't hurt it a bit.

A good article on trolls

In light of Mayberry's little set-to the other day with trolls.

Now these trolls are some messed up folks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=1&ei=5058&partner=IWON&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

The Quality of Data

We preppers are pretty much agreed on one thing, and that is the world is heading into a change.

The big problem is that the data we receive is hopelessly corrupted by the time it arrives at our doorstep.   The data that we see is massaged by everyone and his brother so that it will say what people want it to say.  Not to mention that the sheer volume of data is such that it is nearly paralyzing.

So sometimes, I just wonder, where are we really?  Are we on the slide to oblivion, are we on the threshold of a bright new world?  Just where the fuck are we and what the hell are we doing?

People have been saying that the world is going to hell since the time of Socrates.  But just where are we on the slide?  We can't tell from the data.

So we operate on our gut.  Lets be honest, while my gut has kept me out of trouble, it has also landed me in some impressive jams.  

At the end of the day though, prepped is better than no preps, and like I have said before, I really hope that twenty years from now I kick myself in the ass for wasting my money on these preps, that everything had worked out swimmingly and I didn't need them after all.

An ode to the Sixties