The Circus is Back in Town

Do you ever wonder why motion picture actors and
actresses play such central roles in addressing
the "issues" that the political establishment
would like you to mistake for important
questions? Such people are as well paid as they
are because they have honed the skill of
pretending to be whom they are not, imaginary
characters performing in scripted, make-believe
situations. In a word, they are professional
illusionists, just the sort of people upon whom
political systems depend.
...
But the outcome of the voting is irrelevant to
the interests of the establishment that is
running the circus. Their system owes its
existence to the insight offered by the greatest
of all circus masters, P.T. Barnum: "there’s a
sucker born every minute." Millions of Americans
will confirm this observation in November, as
they stumble into voting booths across the nation
to reaffirm their commitment to the illusions
upon which the destruction of their lives and
wealth depend. And these same people will proudly
advertise their foolishness to their neighbors
and coworkers by wearing lapel stickers reading
"I voted," a message reminiscent of the high
school stunt of putting a sign on a guy’s back
that said "kick me!"

But there is some hope to be drawn from the fact
of the continuing decline in the rate of voting.
For whatever reason, more and more people are
refusing to participate in this sham exercise.
Perhaps, like the man who was fleeced one-too-
many times by side show sharpies who promised
wonders but delivered the ordinary, or whose
"solid-gold" watches left green stains upon the
wrist, more of our neighbors have managed to
transcend their innocence.

Read.

The Big Peeping Tom

While I was commenting at David Brin's
blogspot, he appeared ignorant of all this. I've
known about it for years, but I'm assuming many
others don't. That's why I'm posting the following...

If the NY Times is to be believed, the National
Security Agency engages in “some eavesdropping
inside the country,” There are hundreds of
sources that prove the intelligence services have
been operating similar programs for decades.

Read.

...and this...

Some officials described the program as a large
data mining operation, the Times said, and
described it as much larger than the White House
has acknowledged.

Read.

Now take a look here at how long it's been going
on.

The Next Revolution

"The next revolution will take place between the ears."
--jomama

Global warming? Yea, but...

As little as 30 years ago the talk wasn’t about
global warming, it was about an imminent ice age.
Is an ice age likely? Even possible? Consider
this: There have been more than 20 glacial
advances, or ice ages, in just the last two
million years. And we know from geological
evidence that each glaciation lasted anywhere
from 20,000 to 100,000 years—no one knows why the
disparity—separated by warm periods that last
some 10,000 to 15,000 years. What we can be
reasonably sure of is that we’re now in one of
the warm periods, and this one is already 13,000
years old. Some scientists think it’s at an end
and a new ice age is about to begin.
...
But we now have evidence that ice ages come on
with an abruptness that will catch us by total
surprise. Physical evidence indicates that when
the last ice age started, the British Isles went
from a temperate climate to being completely
covered with glaciers hundreds of feet thick in
just 20 years.

Do scientists think it’ll happen that way again?
Yes. And if the next ice age starts here’s how it
may occur: At first we wouldn’t even realize it,
so the first few years we’d feel we were just
having one or two bad winters. But after a few
years rivers will freeze all-year-round, snow
from the previous years won’t completely melt,
glaciers will begin to form, and some of what is
currently now the world’s most fertile ground
will become unfarmable.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

On the other hand, it may take awhile to occur.

Read.

Amurikun Justice(sic)

Almost all (95-97%) felony indictments are
settled by a coerced plea. By withholding
exculpatory evidence, suborning perjury,
fabricating evidence, and lying to jurors,
prosecutors have made the risks of a trial too
great even for the innocent. Consequently, the
prosecutors' cases and police evidence are almost
never tested in court. Defendants are simply
intimidated into self-incrimination rather than
risk the terrors of trial.

If you don't believe this, look around. The proof
of this can be found in many places.

Best to stay far from such a system.

Full article.

I Was Not Born to Submit...

The author, once a frequent commenter here, is now
wandering the planet.

To the utopian visionaries – of any composition
– I have this to say: I was not made that way,
nor was any other human being ever born upon this
planet. And you will bash your efforts against us
in utter futility for the rest of eternity,
because human beings will never change. Do your
worst or do your best . . . we will still be
there the next morning, as incorrigible as ever.

Indeed, Richard.

Oooha.

Full rant.

Update:

Richard Rieben, the author of the above, taken
from the comment section:

Outta China ... hey, I can access your page
again (no blogs can be accessed inside China).
Thanks for the heads up on this - kinda like a,
what, new year's present. I thought this was the
salient point for the libertarian utopians (and I
know very few libertarians who aren't utopians):

Neither do I. That's one of the reasons I stopped
calling myself a libertarian.

"Howsoever thorough our indoctrination, we
retain a will. It is an individual, unsocial and
unrational quality. Would that the fighters for
freedom could harness the power of that will, but
they never will. It is not in its nature to be
harnessed, only to resist being harnessed – by
anyone, friend or foe."

I wrote the article back in June and found it
floating around inside my mini-computer. I've
been doing a lot of thinking/writing lately; zip
for publication (read: for other people) ... need
to get my shit together and stop trying to figure
out what the rest of you are doing.

Still on the road for awhile. Will check in
periodically. Ask me about China (sometime).

All right, already. I'm askin'.

Clearer by the day...

It is conceivable that the U.S. will suffer some
minor crash and pull back from all of these
disastrous policies and stabilize its Empire at a
lower position of global power. I doubt it can be
done. The problems are so interdependent and
extreme now that it seems pretty clear that the
System is totally corrupt – "rotten" – at the
top, very much like the Soviet System by the
1980's. Small crises and crashes are likely to
accelerate into a Great Crash that can only be
dealt with by getting out of The System in some
way.

Read.

Another myth blown away?

SCORESBYSUND, GREENLAND—Mainstream newspaper,
Internet and TV reports claim global warming is
causing extensive melting of glaciers, icebergs
and permafrost, which might lead to drastic
increases in sea level and threaten inundation of
coastal cities. But there is no evidence that the
sea level is actually rising, only forecasts by computer
models that have been based on thousands of
assumptions.

Photographs of the shore of Greenland show the
sea ice surrounding it has been melting. But upon
my visit, this reporter was shown evidence that
the icecap, where most of the ice is located, is
growing significantly.

Read the details.

Via whatreallyhappened

Edward Abbey

"Whenever I read Time or Newsweek or such
magazines, I wash my hands afterward. But how to
wash off the small but odious stain such reading
leaves on the mind?" --Edward Abbey

That latter is the hard part.

Best not to read such filth, evading those stains.

"How to Overthrow the System: brew your own
beer; kick in your Tee Vee; build your own cabin
and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody
well feel like it." --Edward Abbey

My man!

"Hierarchical institutions are like giant
bulldozers - obedient to the whim of any fool who
takes the controls." --Edward Abbey

True, but only part of the story.

They survive only because of the obedient fools
who support them.

Via Bill St. Clair

Philosophy

PHILOSOPHY, n.
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to
nothing.
--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

One more hits the road

Once I looked, there were many ways to take
action and numerous alternatives available. The
quality and extent of disconnection from the PTB
will grow over time, and with the more of us who
pursue it, and the more diligently we do so, the
faster and better it will grow. None of it will
be easy, but all of it will be a direct blow,
however small, against the real source of their
power, my giving of my own substance and efforts
to feed it. Ultimately, that substance and
effort, from each and every one of us on this
Earth, is the sole source of their power. Most of
it they have stolen, without either our knowledge
or consent. They promised us fair trade and
robbed us all instead.

Read.

A very short history of the united States...

along with a Big Picture...and very illuminating.

Myself, I see history in a one-word definition:
FAILURE. Not just failure but failure on two
fronts which were properly elucidated by two 18th
century giants, the historian Edward Gibbon and,
of all people, the philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel.

Edward Gibbon in a most eloquent manner sees the
subject of history as "…little more than the
register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes
of mankind"?

While Hegel being perfectly consistent with his
philosophical ideals say: "What experience and
history teach is this-that people and governments
never have learned anything from history, or
acted on principles deduced from it."

Full article.

How it'll all play out...

Most importantly, why it will play out
the way it does.

Another Visionary Philosopher speaks...

Soon, a substantial majority (and not just
today's substantial minority) will realize that
elections have become nothing but a cruel joke.

Then -- related or unrelated -- the economy, or
some part of it, will go straight into ... Dick
Cheney's lower intestine.

Most will be blind-sided. Best to avoid that herd
when it stampedes.

If you don't know how all this will play out,
you'll want to read this.

It's all about making new enemies every day, as
I've said here so many times.

When a Savior takes the stage, run for the hills.

Save yourself.

Read.

Via Bill St. Clair

Another mystery explained

"The Earth is spinning around at 1,000 miles per
hour in its orbit causing creatures to grow dizzy
and bump into each other causing news."

Wes "Scoop" Nisker, former "newsman"

It's worse than almost everyone thinks...

Therefore, you, as an individual human, are on
your own if you want to learn how to actually
solve a problem (resolve contradictions). If you
learn how to identify and resolve contradictions,
by simply leaning(sic) how to use words that hold
their meanings, and then ask and answer the
logical questions of any contradiction, you will
indeed be on your own, noticeably, amid a society
of self confused, unquestioning sorts who
believe, rather than question with words that
hold their meanings, the educators, experts,
officials, scientists, news journalists and their
institutional ilk who are using words that do not
hold their meanings and thus training their minds
to be ignorant of how to use words to identify
and resolve contradictions, forever self confused
without solutions to laughably simple problems.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather
a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it
to mean - neither more nor less." --Lewis Carroll

Read.

Pragmatism

"We have been told countless times by pundits and
political scientists that the genius of America
and of our party system is its lack of ideology
and its 'pragmatism' (a kind word for focusing
solely on grabbing money and jobs from the
hapless taxpayers)."
--Murray Rothbard, The Libertarian Manifesto

How free speech was quietly abolished in the UK

First, they arrest a woman for reciting the
names of British troops killed in Iraq in an
otherwise peaceful protest near the Cenotaph.
Maya Evans, who had fallen foul of a clause in
the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act,
was duly convicted last week, given a conditional
discharge and left with a criminal record.

Then, an author taking part in a broadcast
discussion about gay adoptions was telephoned by
a policewoman and informed that her name had been
noted following a complaint that she had made a
"homophobic" remark on air. Lynette Burrows had
offered her opinion that two homosexual men
should not be allowed to adopt a boy, which is a
view with which you may agree or disagree, but
does not warrant a call from the local
constabulary.

Next will bloggers soon be required to register
with the local constabulary and anything radical
posted will be punished?

You do see what's coming, don't you.

Full article.

Via whatreally happened

Neil's way and my way

"The only way to assure peace, progress, and
prosperity is to outlaw the draft, outlaw income
taxation, disarm the government, and arm the
people.

"The only way. Everything else is just
jerking off." -- L. Neil Smith

I like Neil. I liked his book Probability Broach
years ago but I might have a different reaction if
I read it again. I've changed.

Doing what he states above would require using the
same institution with a different set of idiots
to get done. To "outlaw" something requires
some form of government to accomplish. What do you
suppose the next one will do later on?

My take is a bit different:

"The only way to assure peace, progress, and
prosperity is to ignore the draft, ignore all taxes
possible, ignore the government, and arm yourself.

The only way. Everything else is just
jerking off and makes government stronger."

Via Bill St. Clair

Message for the Borg

Bohm believed that the general tendency for
individuals, nations, races, social groups, etc.,
to see one another as fundamentally different and
separate was a major source of conflict in the
world.

So far, so good.

Then he misses the target by a mile...

It was his hope that one day people would
come to recognize the essential interrelatedness
of all things and would join together to build a
more holistic and harmonious world. What better
tribute to David Bohm's life and work than to
take this message to heart and make the ideal of
universal brotherhood the keynote of our lives.

...join together?

Here's what his universal brotherhood will probably
look like.

How will a bigger group solve the problem he's
seen?

We're going to have to come apart before we can
come together again. This will probably require a
Dark Age to rid the planet of the group mind-fuck,
the cause of this Dark Age.

A harmonious world requires far more tolerance
given to individuals just minding their own
business than is evident.

Read.

Fooling fools

But fooling fools, the description of government
functioning since government was invented, by
design of using force instead of reasoning,
cannot stop the increasingly obvious results of
force-based human actions. Each war and all other
contradictions are eventually resolved, by design
of contradictions, therefore proving the fools
who created and supported the wars and other
contradictions, as fools who are therefore simply
useless for the advancement of the human
phenomenon. For how long were the Germans,
Egyptians, Japanese, Romans, Incas, British,
Huns, Russians, Khans, Aztecs, Ottomans,
Americans and thousands of such institutionally
defined fools fooled into believing that their
power-based empires were invincible?

I'm sure most Americans who believe in empire and
know its history think they'll get it right this
time.

Bwahahahahah.

Read. [Near bottom of page]

Mencken

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin." --H. L. Mencken

"Imagine the Creator as a stand up comedian - and
at once the world becomes explicable."
-- H. L. Mencken

Wasting time

"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who
consumes the greater part of his life getting his
living." --Henry David Thoreau

The Defaulting Homeowner

Bonds backed by home loans to the riskiest
borrowers, the fastest growing part of the $7.6
trillion mortgage market, have lost about 2.5
percent since September on concern an 18-month
rise in interest rates may force more than
150,000 consumers to default.

As I've said before, most of the housing loans are
made with variable-rate mortgages. As interest
rates go up, so will the defaults.

Read.

Are you one of these terrorists?

How many more are there? What of the other years?

WASHINGTON--Nearly 30,000 airline passengers
discovered in the past year that they were
mistakenly placed on federal "terrorist" watch
lists, a transportation security official said
Tuesday.

Read.

Is Mankind a Mistake?

I am often asked whether I think we humans are,
by nature, vicious savages. Given mankind’s
dreary historical record for wars, genocides,
torture, and other organized methods of mutual
destruction, are we destined to be the only
species to drive itself to extinction by mass
slaughter? Arthur Koestler posed that question
years ago, suggesting that empowering a killer
ape with great intelligence may have made mankind
an evolutionary mistake.
...
Mankind’s history has long been a trail marked
by blood and broken bodies. But note the
circumstances under which such wholesale butchery
occurs: only when we organize ourselves into
groups with which we identify our sense of being.
[My emphasis]
...
In one-to-one dealings with our fellow humans,
we have a remarkably good record, behaving as
anarchists (i.e., respecting the inviolability of
the lives and property interests of others, and
being responsible for the consequences of our
actions). Virtually all of what you and I do in
our personal lives is contrary to the coercive,
violent, destructive, death-inflicting behavior
of political systems. It is when we remove
ourselves from our personal relationships with
others and organize ourselves into abstract
entities (e.g., the nation-state) that we let
loose upon the rest of humanity those "dark side"
forces that political systems find it so easy and
profitable to mobilize into destructive
campaigns. Our basic decency as individuals tends
to dissolve when we become members of collective
mobs.
...
If we are prepared to explore our own thinking,
and to follow the movement of our own thought, we
may be able to transcend our institutionalized
conditioning by discovering that, because "war is
the health of the state," our best strategy for
survival – both as individuals and as a species –
is to never allow ourselves to become politically
organized.

I'm convinced that all the Pragmatism, Reality,
Science and technology won't mean or yield squat
without most believing and acting on this.

So fucking simple.

Hey, I didn't say it'd be easy.

Full article.

Looking again at The Shell Game

Nonetheless, the notion of the American taxpayer
saving a company with a large and quick fix has
pretty much gone out of style and has not been
repeated since, with the exception of loan
guarantees to airlines after 9/11. Even though
General Motors Corp. and its rival Ford Motor now
face serious financial straits, both are
studiously avoiding public condemnation by
spreading their aid requests widely among many
types of government policies.

Taken together, however, the components of their
wish list would cost tens of billions -- far more
than Chrysler ever dared to seek.

Once the billions are acquired, it will soon be
forgotten. How would anyone then find it all in
the Biggest Shell Game on the planet?

Just add it to this big pile and wait.

First the fools regulate the piss out of the auto
industry then the latter run for subsidies.

Can you see the connections/consequences here?

At whose expense?

Now, empty your pockets, citizen.

See how they run. Many blind mice.

Full article.

Let's see if this works

I've been saying nice things about blogger.com
and now it's not available to view.

Hmmmmm...

The Ford struggle

Ford Motor Co (NYSE:F - news) plans to close
more than eight North American assembly and parts
plants in a drive to revive faltering operations
on the continent, industry paper Automotive News
reported on Monday.

Revive? Not likely.

Citing a "key company insider," the paper said
the number-two U.S. carmaker was likely to close
at least five vehicle assembly plants: in
Atlanta; St. Louis; St. Paul, Minnesota; Wixom,
Michigan; and Cuautitlan, Mexico.

Read.

Thoreau

“And I am sure that I never read any memorable news
in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or
murdered, or killed by accident, or one house
burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat
blown up, or one cow run over on the Western
Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of
grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read
of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted
with the principle, what do you care for a myriad
instances and applications?” - Henry David Thoreau

...or any of the yammerings of the current
politically-encrusted talking heads, in or out of
office and irrespective of institutional affiliation.

I wonder if we'll ever get over it.

Via James P. Wall

The increasing cost of fear

They're winning because too many let 'em.

Where will it all end?

For one thing, many bankrupt airlines.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - An America West Airbus jet
made an emergency landing at Kansas City
International Airport after someone left a note
in the plane’s bathroom that said: “Taliban is
Here.”

Read.

Via The Comfy Chair

Something practical, if you so choose. [Recommended]

In case you've missed it, I've added a link under
Privacy in my links section below.

Want some financial privacy?

Now when you ask yourself, "Where did I find that
link?", come back to jomama's place to find it.

Down to earth

Let's shit can all the layers of abstractions for
a moment...

"Humankind--despite its artistic pretensions,
its sophistication, and its many accomplishments--
owes its existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil
and the fact that it rains." -- Source unknown

I could ask The Question that I usually ask here,
but I won't. You regular readers know what it is.

Via Bill St. Clair

The Problem...

Unpatched IE Flaw Is Worse Than Expected

Last week was shortened by the Thanksgiving
holiday, and it seemed the malware guys took it
off as well. There was not much going on of
recent origin, and the biggest blip on the
security radar was the realization by the
security community that an Internet Explorer
problem first identified six months ago was a lot
worse than it appeared.

The realization caused Secunia to issue a rare
"Extremely Critical" advisory. Once thought just
to be a DoS vulnerability, it turns out that it
also allows execution of arbitrary code.

Read.

The Solution...

Get the new Firefox 1.5 or some other browser.

Firefox 1.5 has been enhanced in several key
areas:

User Experience

• New "drag and drop" feature for tabbed
browsing helps to better organize page viewing.
• Improved pop-up blocker screens users from
more unwanted pop-up ads.
• New reference search engine Answers.com is
now included in the integrated Search box.
• Improved Live Bookmarks feature enables
easier discovery of and subscription to RSS feeds.
• Improved Options interface makes it easier
to adjust browser settings.
...
“Firefox has connected with the global community
of Web users because it delivers a fast, easy,
modern browsing experience”, said Sergey Brin, co-
founder of Google. “Google continues to support
the growth of Firefox because of the strong
alignment between our mission to organize the
world’s information and make it useful, and
Mozilla’s principled approach to developing great
software.”

“Firefox 1.5 represents the tireless efforts of
our global community of developers and consumer
advocates, who continue to work to make the Web
experience better for everyone,” said Baker.

Firefox 1.5 is now available as a free download
from here

Read.