ancona
Praying Mantis
Having been inside for the whole weekend, trying to avoid the 95 degree heat and 85% relative humidity, I had occasion to glance at the Olympic debacle unfolding in England. After months and months of hype and hope, it looks as if the British multi-billion dollar gambit is turning in to a total flop. The hyper militarized, totally commercialized political cluster-fuck is being seen for what it really is. When I read about surface to air missile batteries being emplaced on the roofs of welfare apartment blocks, I knew this was going to get stupid real quick. Little did I know just how quick. Watching several of the events on Saturday, not once did I see the stands with more than 50% of the seats filled. It seems that the corporate sponsors have screwed the pooch and failed miserably in getting the tickets in to the hands of people who wanted to go. With the astronomical prices being charged, most Britons do not have the means to enjoy any of the venues offered, and in fact, they have protested not only the ridiculously high prices, but the lack of tickets available to the general public. Another complaint was the insane security surrounding what should be a fairly open and enjoyable presentation of the world’s best athletes. Instead, they are subjected to unrealistically invasive searches and questioning by a security staff making just over the minimum wage, who have had as little as two weeks training. In addition, there is no guarantee that the staff even speak English. What a fucking joke!
When I was a kid, watching the Olympics was a big deal, and my family made it a must see event by placing our own wagers on competitors in any number of sports. Now, it has been commercialized to the point that it is no longer any fun to watch. That, along with the ridiculous “medal count” makes me sick to my stomach, as it reduces the value of winning to nothing more than a measure of how much money an Olympian can make by selling their soul to Coca Cola after the events.
During my most recent trip to Wally-World, which I find particularly annoying since it is completely unavoidable, I was once again witness to the decline of empire, watching with incredulous amusement as two hideous walmartians battled over the last case of Sam’s Best Cola, each one demanding to have it, yet neither one recognizing the obvious solution of each person simply taking twelve sodas. I just sort of stood there, trying my best to understand how we could have ended up at this terrible place in time. The disintegration of our society is intensifying, along with the stratification of the classes within themselves. I work very closely with a large group of individuals , most of whom earn salaries that are identical to mine, or near enough so. Among this group there are perhaps a dozen or so who share my world views and understanding of the financial system for what it really is. The rest of them are levered up with 400,000 dollar homes, and 65,000 dollar leased Escalades which they will certainly lose when the next round of lay-offs hit them, yet they continue to wander through their days, completely and blissfully unaware and totally unprepared. Many of them do not have saved resources beyond a month or two, maybe a little more if they raid their 401-K’s. I shudder to think about what will happen to society in my area in the event of a SHTF scenario involving the collapse of banking and finance. How long before it degenerates in to dog eat dog?
When I contemplate the possibilities, I can’t help but have visions of roving gangs of half starved, desperate people going from house to house begging for something to eat. I’m not talking about Latin Kings or Crips roving around, I’m talking about those engineers from two paragraphs ago, regular Joes who have nothing because they refused to process reality and prepare themselves for something besides full grocery shelves and working ATM’s.
We need to address the distinct possibility that the Brotherhood of Darkness may not be able to contain the beast they have built, and if this fucker gets away from them, becoming sentient so to speak, it will consume us all. I have read and heard some of the most arrogant men in the world as they profess to have the situation on lockdown, and about how even though they hold hundreds and hundreds of trillions of dollars in dodgy swap agreements and credit default instruments it’s all good, because they all net out to zero anyway. I ask at this point if these things all net out to zero, then why hold them in the first place? Isn’t it pointless?
No, I choose not to believe those who are directly responsible for the RE melt down and the near death experience of our global financial system. From Lloyd Blankfein to Jon Corzine to Jamie Dimon, I hold them all in disregard as they lie and obfuscate their way through the Senate clown show of softball questions and seeming blind acceptance of whatever testimony these scumbags decide to proffer. “I don’t recall Senator”. “I didn’t have that information at the time Mr. Senator”. Bullshit I say, complete bullshit, yet it seems that these ass clowns are too connected to prosecute.
We no longer have a Justice System, we have a legal system, within which you are guilty until you either prove your innocence or come up with enough money to pay effective lawyers to defend you. Just watch a day of traffic court at your local courthouse, it will completely disgust you. Defendants are no longer afforded the basic right to explain themselves in court. The judges are extremely terse and impatient, and will readily get angry if you actually demand your right to a trial. They expect everyone to plea and get it over with, and become irate when you try to assert your rights to something as simple as confronting your accuser. A friend of mine did just that when the cop who gave her a six hundred dollar ticket didn’t show up at court. The judge said he would delay for a month, but this girl was too sharp for that, and having been put off for four months already, she asserted her right to not only confront her accuser but her right to a speedy trial. The charge and ticket were summarily dismissed, but not without a tremendous hassle and several missed days of work to sit in a room on an open docket waiting your turn to be demeaned by the “court”. When I read some of the experiences regular people have had with the “justice system” it makes my blood boil. What was supposed to be our final venue for settlement of disputes and hearing of criminal cases has been subsumed within the revenue machine and turned in to a giant collection agency, tasked with bleeding ordinary citizens of their cash through application of draconian “traffic fines”, municipal infraction fines for bullshit things like having your grass too tall or forgetting to bring in your trash cans on trash day [a fifty dollar fine].
In some ways I relish the thought of complete collapse because when the financial system implodes, it takes with it all the paper tigers, those who have accumulated vast wealth on paper, but who will be wiped out when the pixels all disappear. It will be the great equalizer, bringing all of us on to the same plane, under the same rules. Those who prepared with a large garden and a few chickens will be the new wealthy, and those who were part of the financial paradigm that caused the system reset will be pariahs, as they should be.
There is still some time to get yourselves ready. There is still time to prepare your family to live without many of the comforts and luxuries we all take for granted today. If you have the means, some solar panels and nickel iron batteries will go a very long way towards keeping you comfortable when the lights go out. A water well is second on the list, and having just contracted to have it put in, I find myself feeling a bit more calm, knowing the one thing we cannot live without will be right there in my front yard ready to tap. A garden is incredibly simple as a construct goes, but very labor intensive. Get some ground tilled up with a power tiller while you still can. After a season or two, you can turn the soil with shovels and pitchforks pretty easily, so do the hard stuff while you have the ability to do so with power equipment, because you will be a happier camper when the lights go out if you don’t have to till raw earth by hand. A few weapons and a pile of ammo go without saying, as does regular practice with them to remain sharp. Think you will be able to go it alone with just yourselves and family? Think again friends, think again.
Our little group is only 24 strong, but we’re all committed to each other and willing to share our resources and skills when the time comes. We all can vegetables and we all grow food. Some of us grow significantly more than the others, but we all have the necessary skill sets to expand our gardens when the time comes. We have [as a group] a total of forty one chickens, with twenty six or twenty seven producing eggs. We allow four or five hens to get fertilized every six months or so and go broody, as this guarantees us the next generations of laying hens. While not enough for meat production at this time, we can expand our coops as necessary to accommodate meat production.
As far as security, you had better be ready to keep it up 24 hours a day, because the hungry don’t stop being hungry just because it’s dark, and night time can offer great concealment. A lot of folks think this can never happen here, and that those of us who are preparing are nuts at best and subversive at worst. I say let them think what they want, because when the balloon goes up, I intend to be ready, since the government will be neutered just like the rest of the world. No credit and no means of exchange that the people trust equals starvation, plain and simple, and no means of coercion exists to force producers to produce and growers to grow without a guarantee of payment.
Get ready while you can, you won’t be sorry.
Sorry about the rant.:flail:
When I was a kid, watching the Olympics was a big deal, and my family made it a must see event by placing our own wagers on competitors in any number of sports. Now, it has been commercialized to the point that it is no longer any fun to watch. That, along with the ridiculous “medal count” makes me sick to my stomach, as it reduces the value of winning to nothing more than a measure of how much money an Olympian can make by selling their soul to Coca Cola after the events.
During my most recent trip to Wally-World, which I find particularly annoying since it is completely unavoidable, I was once again witness to the decline of empire, watching with incredulous amusement as two hideous walmartians battled over the last case of Sam’s Best Cola, each one demanding to have it, yet neither one recognizing the obvious solution of each person simply taking twelve sodas. I just sort of stood there, trying my best to understand how we could have ended up at this terrible place in time. The disintegration of our society is intensifying, along with the stratification of the classes within themselves. I work very closely with a large group of individuals , most of whom earn salaries that are identical to mine, or near enough so. Among this group there are perhaps a dozen or so who share my world views and understanding of the financial system for what it really is. The rest of them are levered up with 400,000 dollar homes, and 65,000 dollar leased Escalades which they will certainly lose when the next round of lay-offs hit them, yet they continue to wander through their days, completely and blissfully unaware and totally unprepared. Many of them do not have saved resources beyond a month or two, maybe a little more if they raid their 401-K’s. I shudder to think about what will happen to society in my area in the event of a SHTF scenario involving the collapse of banking and finance. How long before it degenerates in to dog eat dog?
When I contemplate the possibilities, I can’t help but have visions of roving gangs of half starved, desperate people going from house to house begging for something to eat. I’m not talking about Latin Kings or Crips roving around, I’m talking about those engineers from two paragraphs ago, regular Joes who have nothing because they refused to process reality and prepare themselves for something besides full grocery shelves and working ATM’s.
We need to address the distinct possibility that the Brotherhood of Darkness may not be able to contain the beast they have built, and if this fucker gets away from them, becoming sentient so to speak, it will consume us all. I have read and heard some of the most arrogant men in the world as they profess to have the situation on lockdown, and about how even though they hold hundreds and hundreds of trillions of dollars in dodgy swap agreements and credit default instruments it’s all good, because they all net out to zero anyway. I ask at this point if these things all net out to zero, then why hold them in the first place? Isn’t it pointless?
No, I choose not to believe those who are directly responsible for the RE melt down and the near death experience of our global financial system. From Lloyd Blankfein to Jon Corzine to Jamie Dimon, I hold them all in disregard as they lie and obfuscate their way through the Senate clown show of softball questions and seeming blind acceptance of whatever testimony these scumbags decide to proffer. “I don’t recall Senator”. “I didn’t have that information at the time Mr. Senator”. Bullshit I say, complete bullshit, yet it seems that these ass clowns are too connected to prosecute.
We no longer have a Justice System, we have a legal system, within which you are guilty until you either prove your innocence or come up with enough money to pay effective lawyers to defend you. Just watch a day of traffic court at your local courthouse, it will completely disgust you. Defendants are no longer afforded the basic right to explain themselves in court. The judges are extremely terse and impatient, and will readily get angry if you actually demand your right to a trial. They expect everyone to plea and get it over with, and become irate when you try to assert your rights to something as simple as confronting your accuser. A friend of mine did just that when the cop who gave her a six hundred dollar ticket didn’t show up at court. The judge said he would delay for a month, but this girl was too sharp for that, and having been put off for four months already, she asserted her right to not only confront her accuser but her right to a speedy trial. The charge and ticket were summarily dismissed, but not without a tremendous hassle and several missed days of work to sit in a room on an open docket waiting your turn to be demeaned by the “court”. When I read some of the experiences regular people have had with the “justice system” it makes my blood boil. What was supposed to be our final venue for settlement of disputes and hearing of criminal cases has been subsumed within the revenue machine and turned in to a giant collection agency, tasked with bleeding ordinary citizens of their cash through application of draconian “traffic fines”, municipal infraction fines for bullshit things like having your grass too tall or forgetting to bring in your trash cans on trash day [a fifty dollar fine].
In some ways I relish the thought of complete collapse because when the financial system implodes, it takes with it all the paper tigers, those who have accumulated vast wealth on paper, but who will be wiped out when the pixels all disappear. It will be the great equalizer, bringing all of us on to the same plane, under the same rules. Those who prepared with a large garden and a few chickens will be the new wealthy, and those who were part of the financial paradigm that caused the system reset will be pariahs, as they should be.
There is still some time to get yourselves ready. There is still time to prepare your family to live without many of the comforts and luxuries we all take for granted today. If you have the means, some solar panels and nickel iron batteries will go a very long way towards keeping you comfortable when the lights go out. A water well is second on the list, and having just contracted to have it put in, I find myself feeling a bit more calm, knowing the one thing we cannot live without will be right there in my front yard ready to tap. A garden is incredibly simple as a construct goes, but very labor intensive. Get some ground tilled up with a power tiller while you still can. After a season or two, you can turn the soil with shovels and pitchforks pretty easily, so do the hard stuff while you have the ability to do so with power equipment, because you will be a happier camper when the lights go out if you don’t have to till raw earth by hand. A few weapons and a pile of ammo go without saying, as does regular practice with them to remain sharp. Think you will be able to go it alone with just yourselves and family? Think again friends, think again.
Our little group is only 24 strong, but we’re all committed to each other and willing to share our resources and skills when the time comes. We all can vegetables and we all grow food. Some of us grow significantly more than the others, but we all have the necessary skill sets to expand our gardens when the time comes. We have [as a group] a total of forty one chickens, with twenty six or twenty seven producing eggs. We allow four or five hens to get fertilized every six months or so and go broody, as this guarantees us the next generations of laying hens. While not enough for meat production at this time, we can expand our coops as necessary to accommodate meat production.
As far as security, you had better be ready to keep it up 24 hours a day, because the hungry don’t stop being hungry just because it’s dark, and night time can offer great concealment. A lot of folks think this can never happen here, and that those of us who are preparing are nuts at best and subversive at worst. I say let them think what they want, because when the balloon goes up, I intend to be ready, since the government will be neutered just like the rest of the world. No credit and no means of exchange that the people trust equals starvation, plain and simple, and no means of coercion exists to force producers to produce and growers to grow without a guarantee of payment.
Get ready while you can, you won’t be sorry.
Sorry about the rant.:flail:
