Another episode of the Deconstructionists

We saw the telethon tonight. It wasn't the musical telethon, it was your typical disaster relief telethon designed to move a nation into the more charming idea the corral will soon be undergoing dramatic improvements and you'd better stick around because the lead vocalist is making a comeback like no other. The firekeeper actually posted on his favorite site he would not be watching, be forewarned, he doesn't mince words:

...These pieces of shit in Washington DC haven't got a clue what it is like to live hand to mouth, to lie awake at night hoping no one in the family gets sick or injured because you can't afford the insurance.I can barely watch these pompous elitist sacks of shit, posturing before the cameras, fat, wealthy, completely detached from the people they are supposed to represent. There is NO WAY I will watch Obama tonight, because it doesn't matter what he says, his actions NEVER match his words. No doubt he will eloquently hand us a ration of garbage tonight.These fat pompous elitists are running this country into the ground, while they place our sons and daughters in harm's way to secure the future assets of corporations that have no national allegiance. ...

I looked up from reading blogs and saw suits crowding the TV screen. Hardcore, aged, scowling secret service in the Gallery weaving through the throngs of our celebrity leadership. Did Pelosi get a lip job recently? Ah, the ever present pop beads. She could open a tourist boutique in Ghiardelli Square with her inventory. Manolo Blahniks and pop beads. Maybe the Vulcan-vixen could do a consignment deal with her on thigh highs?

I have a sort of standing fantasy and I realize it is a fantasy. It is a deathbed scene with my loved ones all around and everything that happened in life is explained. That somehow some entity with unquestionable integrity and love, clears it all up, the questions, the concerns, the confusing parts are laid out truthfully, once and for all. What that fantasy really is all about is indulging in momentary wishful thinking. I'm confident all of us do something along those lines every now and then.

So I joined the firekeeper and we stared at the television. There is great truth to the idea that Karma shows itself in people's faces. Bodies, too. As in body language. We can think of them as paid extras. Highly paid. I had to stop watching. It was the combination of Number One and the middle class. There is no more middle class. Once there existed a waking dream of class, but that went the way of dominoes falling as did castes. There are them and there are us. We are not ALL in it together. How many of us are Number One's? None, my friends, our multi-digit ISP is our number. The concept of being Number One in the context it was spoken was disconcerting. It meant hierarchy, it meant elite. It meant one indulges in any extreme to maintain the self-assigned illusion of being better, more capable and equipped to live, survive and serve as an example to all (the weakling-victims) beneath that level upon which he dwells. It is classic empire thinking. To have it all, to rule all of it. To be God. What could have been instead became the desire to possess the one mind, an impossibility without being of one mind because when you are of one mind, you have no desire to possess.

A 17 year-old girl was found under the rubble today by the French medics. 15 days after the initial quake. That brings the total found alive to 135. More evidence we should ignore statistical odds and go by guts. The firekeeper is firm in his position, as I said previously, having struggled through the Northridge quake, it was natural. Still, despite his very understandable and logical reasoning, there are some serious questions requiring serious attention. How much more of this kind of thing do we have to see/experience to note the moving paisleys in the pattern? It is this precipice in the fog that keeps these faux celebrities in the ratings. Who are they? Where did they come from? We know they've been with us from the beginning, but they are not of us. In almost any way we can think of they are the antithesis of us like a soap opera. The Deconstructionists. It is a massive, ongoing, proactive struggle for possession - beyond land, beyond oilfields. We wanted none of it, we asked for none of it. Victims just want it to stop. Do victims understand the war of possession is a permanent fixture? Chickory asked today in her comment, Where will they go? A brilliant question. Perhaps it is a question that can be answered only after the fact.

Its alright, we're only bleeding

"... Every day, every night, someone's blood is being offered up on the imperial altars. That's what empire is. That's what empire does.

See Rome

While you were dreaming
While you wrapped your mind in silks
Bronze Steel Stone
Did their work

While you breathed the fumes
Of the oracle's fissure
Deranged the senses
Settled in soft beds

Rome
Sent agents into the streets
Hard men pinched men
Bronze Steel Stone

To eliminate execute
Discredit and destroy

See Rome

While you stood in the forum
Declaimed high words
Filled temples with fragrant smoke
Scrawled millions of learned disquisitions

Rome marched
Somewhere, in your name
Fired the village
In your name
Put steel to the belly

While you were wrapped in silks
While you grubbed
While you drank degraded waters
Drank dark, brilliant wine
While you sang, while you dreamed

Rome was
Rome hammered the real

Your silks
Your songs
Are dreams

See Rome ..."
Chris Floyd | Empire Burlesque

In this dream of the everyday, while our heightened senses speak in conundrum, one event becomes many and a portrait is born. I alluded to this portrait last summer bearing a title in part selected for historical comparison: Red Planet Blue. We are past that now, the plateau in our daydream stretching into infinity, a more permanent firmament. It seems recent, relatively, but time is moving faster, something wants to release itself, something that is tired of its show of patience. It is sad in the way one might feel to have married their perfect soul mate and be told he keeps several mistresses and all of them are coming to live with you. Or worse, not be told and they come to live with you anyway so you are forced to figure it out a little bit at a time because you were under a different impression, a created impression. For months, in some cases many years, you argue with yourself often convinced what you are seeing is not really what it appears to be. Surely, you were somehow deficient in your perceptions, if in fact your wildest fantasies have any credibility and you catch yourself and put it away, it brings you down, you remove yourself from your manifest paranoia and re-enter the dream of the everyday.

It takes about, oh, an hour before you are reminded again and the cycle repeats. Is there a problem? Your problem is very simple, easily resolved, you are merely contending against reality. That's okay, you're not alone. Everyone does it and everyone does it differently. We have a variety of choices we can make, its making a choice at all that is hard because our hearts are in one place and our minds are literally in another. Perhaps by procrastinating on choice we arrive where we need to be anyway, on autopilot, going with the flow until the flow becomes a river of lifestyle and you are floating along with the current, gazing at the sky from your raft, listening to Nature's concerto, just you, nothing to impede your bliss and suddenly the word bliss acts as a hypnotist snapping his fingers, Wake up now. See Rome.

It is a huge exercise in imagination to look into the near future. Some will scoff, but scoffers are not imagining hard enough. Start over, look again. Read the tea leaves. See those satellites? Billboards of tomorrow, advertising yesterday, an annoyance at best, but legal. They have rights, they have personhood. They are normal. Everything that is happening to our world is normal. Is it normal to lose a nuke? If you don't think it is, you are not thinking hard enough. The guards fell asleep or maybe the inventory was incorrect, "how" is not as important as it being normal. How normal is a 7.0 earthquake demolishing the poorest nation in the western hemisphere? Its growing more normal every day. So normal, we now have other recent catastrophic disasters followed by catastrophic marathon telethons to align with it all in the same sentence. Why this is just like ___, and ____, and wasn't there something on that scale in ____? ...

It is time we got on with our lives. Make some kind of serious commitment to God. If you can create your own personal salvation scenario, it will stick, you will need it and rely on it, not if but when you slip. We'll need it to keep going, the avalanche is breaking, its rugged granite all the way down and you will need a life jacket. I found God outdoors, overlooking clouds below where I stood, spreading into a distant valley, mule deer grazing unafraid, honey yellow, lapis lazuli , lavender wildflowers cascading into the wash far below the wooden bench someone unknown put there for just such a purpose. Tiny Oaks in full bloom made a green carpet up and down the scene, Ravens played above waiting on a thermal. People gravitate to God, the little people, the good and innocent and courteous little people, because everything else will hurt you and what you think about when you think about God will not leave you and is not, by your own design, designed to fail you.

I didn't see the telethon. They are Orwellian now in their commonality. Just as all else now, the filler up? attendant who actually performed a service was erased. He was helpful, but a drain on the Exxon bottom line. You have to fill the tank yourself if you want to see anything go right and even then there are plenty of grey areas where it could go wrong. And there is always that possibility going wrong will have exponentially wrong after-effects. Instead, I tended the fire for a few minutes until the movie unfolding on HBO sucked me in. Revolutionary Road. There were a few cheesy moments, an intentional flashback to Titanic's sex scene on the auto deck, but beyond that worst of the cheesy moments the situation the protagonists find themselves in is one you are probably familiar with, concerning choice, concerning the way things are and how they might continue if they continued further. One of them chooses life and fails, the other chooses death because he was already dead.

The film would like to tell us that everyone has within them a breaking point, but that is not true according to the nightmare of the everyday dream. It drones on. And on. There is one thing to remember, for the nightmare makers to sleep with, everything changes completely every few hundred thousand years or so. That fabulous tweakers' multi-unit development overlooking billion dollar 360 degree views of Lotus hammock paradise as far as the eye can behold will someday be another Atlantis. See Rome.

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One last item, windows 7 is vista updated in lockstep with the way things are, yet another bailout to yet another industry. That means less art, less photography, less visual stimulation, more hype, more baloney tech reviews, more disappointing faux journalism, more gouging, more drag, less movement. If you have not crashed your XP yet, you might underestimate what I am saying, but it is guaranteed not too far from today you will be introduced to the truth. You will be crushed, but its alright, you're only bleeding.

Silber, beasts, costumes and slaveships

I'm glad to see Arthur Silber found his voice again, for however long it may last. Even though I don't know him personally, he makes you feel like you do. If you haven't visited his blog, Once Upon a time... , try to make a point to do so, you'll find it hard to make the visit brief. He doesn't have comments and perhaps its just as well. There are so many links you will have an overwhelming volume of material to consider, it may just be an exercise in repetition to comment with any comprehensive remark other than perhaps with a word that isn't in the dictionary. What he does is this: He fills in the holes where you thought you had it all figured out, and did, but could have done better if your mind was stripped of all external noise. His personal life I understand is extremely difficult, bordering on impossible actually. You can see for yourself because you will get hooked and want to read all the way through the archives, not a quickie I assure you.

There is something, hmmmm, saintly to me about people who go right to the heart of the matter without an agenda, without exaggerating or omitting crucial thinking points. It is the height of the whole Internet experience as far as I am concerned. When I say saintly, I am saying "pure", untainted, no flavorings, no e-coli. Its a quality I always look for and more often than not am bored because there is so much of nothing being jammed through the motherboards. Basically, I limit the experience to the tried and trues. Listen, on dial up you don't want to waste time.

I know, I haven't said the H word yet. I am forcing myself to refrain for a short time in an experiment to see if it removes the huge dark boulder of epic tragedy pressing on my heartstrings. It is true I placed it there and once begun, it enters the blood stream flowing to the brain where it acts as an antagonist on normal serotonin re-uptake. Without consciously realizing it we cannot avoid returning to the Polaroids of the Civil Rights era of the deep south, Strange Fruit, Tuskegee, George Wallace, Lester Maddox and his Chicken Lickin' lunch counter and the cooks given axe handles, we cannot avoid going back further to the true to life stories passed on through generations, stories of indescribable suffering. Then you go back farther, as far as you can. You can go back very far, its all there. After living our insignificant and insular lives, we awake to find its still there, costumed differently as are most things, but alive and making plans.

I've known a lot of undercover racists, those who knew better but adopted the mores of their social community for survival within the community whose leaders made their feelings clear. This is not any different than accepting never ending war as the way things are. That middle easterners are dangerous, that security enhancements are for our own good, that we are hated for our freedoms. It has NEVER sat right with me. It is illogical in fact because we are all members of the human species, just another species inhabiting the same planet with the same needs and drives. I must have missed the miseducation of the illiterates where hatred of our fellows was a required course for successful living. It has cost me, it would cost you, too, to go against the grain, to be stupid and feign ignorance, but there never was any other way possible. Not a single time would I have backed down, there was never a choice.

It seems the route racism has taken is a pretense it ended with slavery, then came the pretense it ended in the 60's Civil Rights Movement. And certainly, with a Mulatto leader, it does not exist at all, right? What will they call it when we have a GLBT leader? A Jewish leader? An Arab leader? Perhaps we are supposed to think the world will collapse before it ever gets that far? If the world does not collapse within the predictable future, we will definitely be in line for leaders of any persuasion and nationality, very likely Arab as in the last holdout for the industrial revolution. Westerners have no prejudice when it comes to fulfilling their own needs. The same can be said for psychopaths.

I'd happily end this entry on an optimistic note, but that isn't in the cards right now. What we see overall may be costumed differently, but we're still in 1604. Indeed, there are billions more bodies, but nothing really changed. As the oil depletes, the costumes come apart, the masks slip off and the rough beast is revealed lumbering among us freely, unimpeded, rampaging in riches and gloating in triumph. There are a lot more rough beasts in our overpopulation crisis. Everything multiplied while we were consuming fluff and now its ensured we consume ourselves. There appears to be no end in sight other than an act of God. Everybody in a position to reverse the tides is far more interested in covering their hides from the punitive prejudice of the 1604 community. Everywhere there are warnings and signs of things to come, if we are clear on nothing else, let's at least be clear about that. Never was there a more implosive mix than racism and the end of easy oil.

Mon Dieu

Lax codes, no steel reinforcements, likely plenty of seawater was used in cement mixing, has very seldom experienced any earthquake activity, it rains there everyday... meaning the dirt roads passing as main roads, the floor of the communities is mud, all the time, everyday. The scent of rotten mangoes permeates the atmosphere. In every home and small "whatever is being served regardless of the menu its fried rice" cafe hangs a poster portrait of Baby Doc. Probably illegal, but that doesn't mean much. Now, this place is not like anywhere else in the world. Obiah, dirty hands runs through the streams where water used to flow. After hours the donkeys scream over the walls. Ever heard a donkey scream? The winds rise, the seas roll, moorings slip free, things happen with no logical explanation. You'd have to be accustomed to Voodoo audio to get a night's sleep.

There are so many of more of them then Haitian Barack Obamas. Although there are people from everywhere camping out until something else somewhere else beckons. Jacmel - which is a town just over the mountain, a day's jitney to Port Au Prince (beautifully creative artworks with wheels and seats you share, sound systems tuned with high bass, squeeze your white person body in between boxes for suitcases wrapped with twine) is known for the damage done by Hurricane David. My friends there happen to be a Belgian couple (there is always a European couple in these places that have lived there seemingly forever) whose original reason for travel was a sail around the world. Their craft lies beached, keel even with the horizon, a 50 ft. rusting hulk of ribs, a memory of David and the reason they linger in Jacmel. I would tell you they are amazing people, but the last time I saw them it looked like they were well on their way into alcoholism. Harmless, genteel, soulful people in a very long drawn out painless suicide, after all, what future would they have in Jacmel in their condition. I have much love for them. Everyone they ever knew before the yacht was trashed must have been to visit them by now. Perhaps they have achieved a certain kind of fame, I wouldn't know, but I have met people in the US that know them and stayed with them. Not a coincidence. They have enough money to live richly in the poorest section of a decrepit and decadent slaveholder's town Papa Doc is reported to having said "would be forgotten" while visiting Jacmel to dedicate the new concrete dock because an onlooker spat on him. The people came to learn there was truth to those words as medical and dental services, eventually, all services passed them by, repeatedly. It may or may not be true, but it was explained to me by various people as if it were common knowledge. Undoubtedly, Jacmel is now in more serious trouble. I cannot imagine the horror unfolding, I know it is beyond our capacity to understand unless maybe you were caught under the rubble of the WTC. Think of an entire destitute country, clawed apart by big ag and panties manufacturers, women and children eating mud cookies, galvanized shacks abutting more galvanized separated by curtains of colored plastic strips, squatting because chairs are too precious, chickens and sick dogs roaming about the dwellings, potties spilled and broken, think of ground zero in Manhattan spread across French terraced mountains from the Caribbean to the Bay of Gonaives rippling out to Santo Domingo, to Kingston, to Havana, to the Grenadines, a 7.0 may well have been felt very far away. The aftershocks, 24 at this count, are registering 5.0 mag.

What are we going to do about it? Oh, the usual despite the adjective catastrophic proceeding disaster. Our grave media delivery men are vying for selection to do an on-location. We'll probably see Xe over there with AK47's and various microwave weaponry to maintain (maintain?) order because there is no order and there was so little, if any, to begin with. The victims will accidentally be referred to as insurgents by Harry Reid. Haiti will be observed to be comparable to a war zone. The missionaries have already landed.

You cannot say this is worse than Katrina. In the same way you wouldn't compare Banda Aceh with Pompeii, if you were not present at all of them.

They say the buildings that house the officials that would normally be in contact with the US State Department are lying in ruins. Rubble and dust. What could possibly lie ahead for Haiti now? How do people rebuild from nothing? Everyone living in daily catastrophic disaster before this morning will now live in the decaying rubble of catastrophic disaster for the remainder of their lives. They are a highly emotional people in general, they hold nothing back, if they cry, they wail, if they are happy, they dance in the muddy streets. Surely there are human cries tonight, swimming in fact in a vast sea of tears and for everyone, wretched conditions totally unimaginable to most Americans, from today forward.

The Americans will want to do something, they will be told to donate to the cause. There will be disaster relief movements and there will be carpetbaggers. If we were smart, instead of public relations celebrities, we would refrain from handling this disaster in the typical fashion. We should get food and medical supplies and experienced search and rescue workers over there. We should use Predator drones with thermal imaging to find the people under the rubble. We should get earth-moving equipment sent in now on C-130s. But already Hillary says its too difficult. Well, why Hillary? We do it for war, don't we? We made the world's largest luxury embassy city in Iraq and its too difficult to hop on down to Haiti? Our idle freighters can't spare a convoy? What is it, the fuel expense? If you are going to keep up appearances, you'd better reserve a little extra fuel for disaster aid.

It isn't cash this place needs now. I fear the corrupted will inhale any money appearing as aid and the Haitians will be left with debt in the quadrillions, possibly well into infinity. We must not put ANY restrictions on anything we should be giving freely as one people to another, no abortion restrictions, no medical trials on the desperate, no political fomenting dependent on aid. Give the gift of help without strings attached, is that possible? We need to stop this phony holier than thou superstar boss act now. This is the perfect time to put aside political posturing and do something good for someone else without taking back. However, the world being what it is, operating as it does, a lot of people will make a lot of money because disaster always brings the cockroaches out of hiding. This situation isn't an American situation, its a CARICOM situation, but the US has to meddle because as you will hear at any moment now, its the Christian thing to do. What about the real thing to do? That is a question you won't hear.

For the Haitians, if they are not deluged with more corruption than they already live amidst, they are used to working hard, inventive and imaginative and capable of evolving into a stronger country provided the corporatists of the econo-agro-ocracy back off.

At this moment a TV newscaster is saying Haiti is not capable of dealing with a disaster on this scale. We'll hear a lot about that in the coming weeks. I ask you, what did the early inhabitants of Planet Earth do when disaster struck? And what did the early peoples in faraway locations do? And we are still here, I think.

Now I'm going to relight the fire in the fireplace and sit on the hearth and send healing thoughts far south. Tonight I will sleep in a bed in a house while Haitians have nowhere at all to sleep or pee or gather their thoughts or just take a break. What else do we have they don't? We have a cowardice they lack. They do not hesitate to speak up and they speak from their hearts. They will go on because they have always gone on, all of life has always been unbearable suffering and its a hard, raw lifestyle that claws its living out of nothing yet lives. In comparison, we are marshmallows talking about survival. It is to weep.

all at once and then more

Right on cue, our friend Su is in the heart of an endurance test the likes of which bring out the true character of the mortal undergoing this particular moment on Planet Earth. If you have ever been through anything similar to the wildfires raging in South Africa today, you would know how it feels. Its natural terror, raw, incontrovertible, heinous, you are forced to live up to all your claims or wuss out, or worse, take advantage, but the remarkable thing is how rare are the wusses and the deviants. Not until natural disaster takes hold of the community do we get to see how small and local is not only the answer, but in reality, all that matters.

I thought as I greeted this day that it held very different avenues for attention, but I can't get Su's predicament out of my mind. That's a good thing because she asked for our good intentions earlier this morning.

It is always deeply troubling when our buddies of the web undergo the test of disaster. There is so little we can do, our natural inclination is assistance, somehow, but the anonymity of the web required because we exist alongside sickos, spammers, trackers and gangsters makes it generally impossible to even do something small such as track a wildfire. South Africa is a big place. What can we really do when someone we care about is in danger? Yes, this is the care-less world provided by terror-fied corporate governance grown small while living large. Technology is no redemption for this problem. All we can do is wait and pray. We can send healing thoughts. We can post hope on blogs. But in reality it is not about us at all. That we take it upon ourselves to be concerned is usually the only role we'll get to play, which isn't saying much. Its the rare disaster victim who is able to communicate online or check their email during the unfolding of each moment therefore I don't expect to receive updates on Su's situation until she's safe and sound.

It is inevitable we experience a number of tests and trails during our journey in this life. I have absolutely no doubt Su will shine her way through, we know only this much, but that is a lot to know. In the interim, we revisit our own disasters, personal or public, and empathize. Look around, does Utopia exist anywhere anymore, did it ever? Utopia is in the moment wherever you are. Su has shown us many times she is Utopia-walking which is why she will come out of this improved, just when we thought she was excellent as she is. I so look forward to her tale, truly, I long to read the relief and myriad side stories of the Unschool, the villagers and the animals' foibles. May that day come soon, like instantly.

May it come for all of us in this march forward into full-stress apocalypse. You know what I mean, the collapse panorama stretching across the planet, the unexpected twists and turns so frequently it almost seems mundane, everyday there is a disaster going on somewhere, sometimes its your turn. The trick, if your want peace of mind, is to refrain from it wherever possible, but when its costumed as something other than what it is that can be difficult even to the most insightful souls. Worse than difficult is using disaster as a lifetime crutch for character deficiencies when you are intelligent enough to know better but make a conscious choice to ignore your behavior. You can build an entire existence out of falsehoods and come to believe in it all completely even as the results grow in ongoing catastrophe. I've seen enough of that to recognize it, even though I don't want to recognize it, there are enough similarities in the general progression of events that are undeniable. Perhaps this is how apocalypse works its magic? "The revealing" means we are paying attention (whether we want to or not) to the root causes behind exponential disaster and learning how to survive more effectively in spite of western junk food attention spans. It is no small detail that Su is on record saying she is a better person for having survived the total loss of material possessions in an earlier fire. When you use those words as a metaphor for civilization's progress, you are on a higher plane already.

UPDATE: Su is okay. One wonders what official routes and permission levels she must have gone through that she was able to post a very brief message on her blog? I'm impressed. Honored, actually.

the song remains the same

Communication Breakdown, It's always the same. I'm having a nervous breakdown, Drive me insane. (Page, Jones, Bonham)

Here's an MSM headline from today, "Experts say cold snap doesn't disprove global warming". As if to subliminally suggest well, hey, we were right all along. Then you go with their flow and payment schedules and voila, they gotcha. What the headline actually says is cap and traders are civilization's heroes. Whatever programs they've agreed upon at this early (too late) date, programs that stripmine the global poor for the benefit of the waddling rich and whatever parts were shelved for later and whatever parts will never be acknowledged even among themselves, none of it addresses the issue the way the issue demands. However, we've come a long way - relatively. Something (the usual) is being allowed to surface. It appeared for a while it was not going to be addressed at all. (It still isn't.) That it is being tossed about like a bolo ball, always returning to the paddle held by the richest (and domineering) nations, is just another bailout in disguise, and there are many - such as the body scanning machine subsidiary waiting patiently under the same no-bid manufacturing umbrella as Abu Ghraib's shackles and waterboards. What is wrong with bailouts? As I understand the movement, the money window provides loans with a large and ominous ball of string attached from which dangles the requirement to "retrofit western or else". We could say, the lenders at the bailout window double duty as the nation's and the world's largest collection agency who's ability to collect rides herd on the sovereigns' ability to grovel penniless while mouthing platitudes and opening up their airspace, obviously a shabby reality subhead under the banner of World Economics aka Foreign Policy in which the global map is being redrawn at gunpoint extincting nice people like the Bedouins.

Retrofitting western means pony up while the pony is collapsing from an extreme overdose of lucrative, but finite, natural resources. When you're out walking and you see an SUV with a pony up bumpersticker you'd know the driver has been driven insane. I saw one parked at the post office last month. Try to stay out of his lane ...

What are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to write complimentary emails to our representatives in congress? Are we supposed to disrupt protests and report on our neighbors comings and goings? No, we are supposed to send donations. That's all they want. Don't expect any return on the invesment. Nothing will buy us any truth. They are not, under any circumstances, including natural disaster and public condemnation, coming clean. Chris Floyd pointed out in his recent and excellent essay, Blowback On the Border: The Purpose of the Terror War System:

...And so, as I wrote the day after 9/11 (and quoted again recently, in this piece about Obama's surging Terror War):

"Blood will have blood; that's certain. But blood will not end it. For murder is fertile: it breeds more death, like a spider laden with a thousand eggs. And who now can break this cycle, which has been going on for generations?"

The cycle will go on -- because that is what is wanted. The purpose of the system is what it does...

Indigenous poverty, poor health and ignorance is policy within the system. In similar style, our friend Publius is being pressured to memorize his employer's corporate mission statement, the peoples of the western world are supposed to memorize and live, to the best of their abilities, the mission statement of the terror system. This is why it is unfailing, repeated in endless reruns, serialized, from top tier to the bottom rung, always with us, in our food, our water, our entertainments, our travels within the permissible minuscule radius. Its like living on a giant sheet of flypaper. Our wings are beating but our bodies stuck.

The facts and questions presented by The Oil Drum come in the format of eloquent essays, painstakingly researched, if you want to know anything about peak, that's ground zero to start. Yesterday's question was Why doesn't government talk about peak oil? I'd judge that question equally as thrilling as Led Zep's Houses of the Holy. We know why they don't, dont we. Today's Oil Drum roll, as you can see in my sidebar, concerns Iraq delaying peak for another decade or so due to massive supply. It shows a chart of deals made per oil field. The US is not on the list. Oops, after all that ongoing carnage? The disclaimer is a new Iraqi administration could revise all the deals when and if it pleases. If I was going to comment over there, I would ask, loudly, why in the hell would they ever give us any deals? Maliki, the current Howdy Doody, has his breaking point as we have seen before, whatever else he may be, can't be pleased to be forever cast in a patsy role and I suspect it won't hold for the long run. Just wait until he's forced to deal with Iran. Bad scene on the horizon... he will be forced against Amindenejad, a man known for making decisions on his own without any outside interlocutors.

We envision the neocon vampires in their midnight office of special plans toiling away at distasteful arrangements laboring to achieve a nefarious goal while bullhorning the goal (the system and its policies) as altruistic. Whenever it became too complicated and might possibly give away its corrupt intent, the items too noxious to speak of were snuck into secret files labeled classified on which a decal was pasted saying executive privileged. In other words, the system and its policies have their own designated language which is the language of True Blood. All the lawyers had to go back to continuing professional education seminars to learn True Blood. Some even managed to lobby for TV courses successfully as evidenced by Dexter and the Sopranos, Sons of Anarchy and the Tudors which they download and watch on their Blackberries between show trials between the hours of daylight and dawn lest they turn to ancient ash.

I wonder if anyone in Yemen (rhymes with lemon) is having an "Oh my God, what have we done?" moment? Likely, but in the spirit of The Vulcans, you'd better keep it to yourself because its all over now.

This is how its going to be, will you be there?

Last year I wrote something similar for the deleted Deep Into Artlife West Stories blog and let it go when managing too many blogs became unwieldy. I am so glad to see John's work today, he says it all, as always. You will find his brand new short story in its entirety below. Many of you will have already seen it, however you must be a subscriber to his newsletter and if you want to see his new serial of works, Fade to Black, you'll have to subscribe to that as well. This is the only time I will put it up on this site, all the subscribing information lives on Survival Acres. But if you lose the link, which happens in a crash, I will be glad to share it. It is exciting to see how John easily switches to first person after so long publishing facts. I'm really looking forward to more. We do tire of nonsense, don't we? Denial and cover ups, like hey, just spill it. You see, they think we cannot handle the truth of their corruption, ah but we've been conditioned well during these recent Lost Decades of Lies.
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Short Story

I've got to get these words down before it's too late. I don't know how much time I have, they may have seen me come in here and I know if the find me, it's all over. For good this time.

I wish I had more time, but I don't, so bear with me, I'll try to get it all down as best I remember it.

The Thirty-Years war was finally over. Actually, it didn't last that long and some say it wasn't just a single war. Well, it wasn't, not really, but one war led to another with no break in between and it wasn't long before everyone was involved. It only stopped long enough for the nations to rearm themselves, so we never really did catch a break.

It doesn't matter anyway how long it lasted or what it's called, it happened, and it destroyed everything. By that, I mean EVERYTHING. There is nothing left. There's no water, no soil, no food, no cities, nothing. Not here. Maybe not anywhere, I don't know. It's all gone, dismantled and taken apart or blown to bits. Many areas are radioactive now, but you should know that, everybody knows that.

As far as the planet goes, well, we're fucked. Royally. I'm alive only because I got very, very lucky and because somebody else saw all this coming and he made it possible for me to be here today. But my time is running out. I'm sick now and the strompers are after me, I'm pretty sure they saw me head in this direction.

Sorry, I'll stick to the story. The year was 2010. This was the year we, I mean the planet broke all temperature records, at least it was hotter then it was before. It got worse later, like last year, it was really bad. The crop losses were huge then and the world plunged towards hunger and starvation. It was the poor countries that suffered the most. The rich countries continued to hoard food and energy resources (oil in those days) for themselves. Those that didn't have enough didn't get enough from anyone, anywhere.

The United Nations was still in existence back then, before they were taken over by the Global Legion. But they weren't able to do anything anyway. 2010 was bad, but this was only the beginning of the troubles we endured.

I wasn't even here then, not yet. My dad didn't buy into the promises the government was making and back then, you could still have as many kids as you wanted. Even though by now a lot of people knew that overpopulation would only make things worse then they already were.

I had two sisters and one brother. They're all dead now, both my sisters died from the Red Plague that killed those millions in the 20's. My brother was killed fighting in Angola. God only knows why he was stupid enough to go, although I don't suppose he had any real choice. Everyone was drafted back then, didn't matter who you were or where you lived, you fought. The Global Legion saw to that, everybody was "enlisted".

My dad called this conscription and slavery. I didn't go, because as far as the government was concerned, I never existed. That was hard, living and hiding and pretending I was one of "them", but I wasn't anybody. I worked at home with my dad, and when he died, well I just kept myself going, but I had my dad's library and research.

Our neighbors thought I was unable to fight, but they never asked either. My dad told me once that he'd fixed it for me somehow, and that they'd leave me alone. For that, I am eternally grateful, as I'm sure I'd be among the millions of dead that have been lost.

But I wasn't prepared for what came after my dad's death. It was his books, the ones he wrote himself and the other ones I found. And his journal. That was the most amazing piece of writing I have ever seen anywhere. It changed my life and my thinking and I became what my dad said I would. This was before I even knew what he was talking about. I became a "gojun", the word has several definitions. I like that one that means "fight from the spirit". I think my dad might even be the one who invented this word, but I'm not sure.

He died hard, but I think he knew that he would. The blood was everywhere, but he'd killed the three who killed him. I found him too late to do anything about it, and buried him up on our hill, at night when it was really dark and nobody could see. There wasn't anybody else there and I didn't know who I could trust back then, so it was just me and him in the cold ground. I cried a lot, I couldn't help myself, but I was glad I was able to do this for him. A lot of people had died, and nobody buried them. Entire cities had been destroyed in an instant and entire generations of families were instantly wiped out. By then, I was fourteen and it was 2028.

I didn't know what to say to the neighbors when they eventually asked, so I simply told them the truth. That's something else I learned from my dad, the truth was always better then a lie. They were sympathetic, and a couple had even come by to check up on me since, but I haven't seen anybody now for a long time. George told me that my father was a good man and had made a hell of a difference in the world. It wasn't until I had read my dad's books and his journal did I finally figure out what George meant by that. To me, he was just my dad, and then he was gone.

I didn't know what to do with myself for a long time, but I managed to stay alive. One reason that happened is my dad had made sure I'd have what I needed to do that. I won't tell you everything, 'cause he also said it's not a good idea to blab about everything, but he made sure that there would be the basic things I needed to stay alive and that's what I did.

By 2030, things were getting really bad. A lot of people that were still left had disappeared or died from one thing or another. The Red Plague took a lot of them, but others were killed by the strompers. They were forcing people to talk about all their neighbors then, back when they still thought some of us might have something still worth taking. It didn't matter what you might have, they'd take it. They'd even take the young boys and girls when they found them.

That's why they're after me, somebody talked, but I don't blame them, whoever it might have been. The strompers were brutal, I saw what they'd done to Kevin's family, back when he still had one.

This is where I got lucky. Something, I not sure what it was, told me it was time to clear out. I'd been pretty much planning on doing this anyway, knowing that if others were disappearing near here, it would be my turn soon too. So I'd been moving my stuff, just the essentials to my hidden spot, at night when I could get it done and nobody could see. It wasn't too far, but it was still hard work.

That's when they'd come looking for me, I could tell by the signs they left that they'd been there. But I'd been gone then and like usual, they came at night. They didn't find me, but they'd found some of my dad's guns and some of the food stash that I'd still had left behind. All these things were gone now and I knew they'd be back. But they didn't find the cellar and the hidden door, where my dad and I had hid all the really important things we needed to survive.

But I was out of time, there was no way I could move this stuff fast enough by myself. And there wasn't anybody I could ask to help either, almost everyone around here was gone now. So I decided to just move everything I could and hide it close by, and then try and get that all moved to my hidden spot where I was planning to live.

It took me all night to do it, but I got it done. There was a dense stand of trees still alive back then nearby, where my dad had planted them years before. He told me that this was our future firewood supply and it wasn't far away at all. So I made dozens of trips with a wheelbarrow and taking everything out of the cellar, I got it all stashed in the trees. By dawn, I was exhausted and I managed to drag myself away someplace where I could see if the strompers would come back.

They did too, but they didn't bother to look around much. They just checked the old house and crashed around breaking things, looking for more food and weapons. There wasn't much there, part of my dad's strategy had been to never appear to have too much. They left empty handed this time, having already taken everything that they wanted.

That night, I started making the trips to the hidden spot and getting everything moved. The weather turned cold by the time I was done, I could only do one trip a night loaded down. But nobody found that stash, which was a damned good thing, or I'd have long since been dead.

And this is where I stayed for the next seven years, hiding here, coming out only at night and never in the day. But now everything is dead, it happened so fast, you can see the gray ashes everywhere. And I'm sick, so I broke my own rule and tried to find some help. There's blood when I cough now and I don't know how to treat whatever it is that I've got. And that's how the strompers found me again. I'd left to see if I could find help, I didn't want to to die up here all alone.

I'd gone in the direction of town, but I hadn't been there now in many years. It took me two days of walking to get near, and I didn't see anybody. But when I got there, I realized I had made a mistake. There was nothing there, just some burned out hulks of buildings, but no sign of any people. The town had burned to the ground apparently, and was abandoned.

I decided to take another route back, but it was slow going. What had used to be a verdant forest way back now was now just a wasteland, but there was a great many downed dead trees I had to cross, and this is where they spotted me. I had just cleared the top of a ridge, the only living thing moving for miles around, or so I thought. But I'd skylined myself and the movement caught their eye.

They were down below me in a clearing, there was a camp of some sort with huge piles of junk piled up all around. They saw me about the same time I saw them. I disappeared back over the ridge before they could shoot. If they could shoot, I didn't know if they had any weapons still or any ammunition for them, but I recognized their uniforms or what passed for them. They were strompers alright, and I was certain that they'd kill me if they could find me.

I ran, jumped, leaped and crawled until my lungs tore through my chest, and then I ran some more. Once I thought I might have a little distance away from them, I started back tracking very carefully to hide my path. This was hard to do now, as the land was so badly damaged that going any direction, even backwards was slow going. And I was still coughing up blood, more now that I was exerting myself so hard.

I decided to not go directly back to my hidden spot. If they were able to track me, I'd lead them right to me. But I made another mistake, I didn't count on them not giving up. I was probably the only living thing they'd seen in a long time, I certainly hadn't seen anything alive.

It took me three days of hiding and evading to make it back here, but I'm pretty sure they're not far away now. I still need to tell you about what happened to the rest of the planet, as far as I know it to be. I'm not sure if anybody will ever find this, but I've got to try.

Well, I said we're fucked, and we are. I don't know how many people are still alive, but if they're like me, they didn't move far enough north to survive. Everything is dying around here and that means I can't grow any food or hunt any animals or even drink the water like before. I have to triple filter the water now and it might even be why I'm sick, but I don't know.

The war took everything and whatever was left, was destined to die from hordes of desperate people eating everything. Nothing was preserved. The forest and trees were cut down and what survived eventually died from the gray ash falling from the sky. The streams were choked with this stuff. The plants died, the animals died or migrated someplace else, but here, now -- there's nothing.

I heard the seas rose and flooded entire countries and all the low lying islands. My dad wrote about this in his journal, but I've never seen the ocean. He'd written that there were nearly two billion refugees before I was born, I can't even imagine that number. Where did those people go? My dad wrote about them only a little more, most of them disappeared into other lands and refugee camps, but almost all of them died in the wars that followed.

I didn't know where to go. I stayed hidden all those years, but leaving really didn't seem like an option. If I left, I'd probably have been caught, because by then you couldn't survive off in the woods by living on the land. They'd already wiped out almost every living thing that could be eaten and even though the gray ash hadn't come yet, there wasn't anything left to keep you alive. I survived this long only because I had food. I was one of the few, maybe even the only one who did. The strompers simply took their food from whoever they could, I heard that they had even eaten people after the animals disappeared.

But what I don't know, and I still don't know is if everybody is dead and dying everywhere else. My dad told me that there would be groups up north, far, far away up near the pole. He said they might live, if they were smart, and if they didn't kill everything off. He said it was possible and that's why I'm writing this all down. Maybe they'd like to know what happened down here as much as I'd like to have known what happened up there.

The radio quit working almost four years ago, so I have no idea what's happened elsewhere since then. But even then it was all propaganda like my dad said. They were still trying to force their rules and regulations on everyone, even though there were far fewer of us still around and everything was either dead or dying. But the radio fell and broke and I haven't heard another voice until a few days ago when the strompers tried to catch me. I've been very lonely, but I've been alone so long that I guess I'm pretty used to it by now.

But my story -- I watched everything die, all around me. It was gradual at first, but then it was faster and faster. It was almost as if someone had taken an eraser and was rubbing everything out. It was very sad to see. I loved the forest and the wilds but it became a harsh, bitter place with things dying everywhere. There wasn't enough rain and the forest fires were terrific. This accounted for the grey ash at first, but later there was more as the bombs fell.

The dying continued and it was a dark period for me. I couldn't help it, so I began to read more and more. I'd managed to save my dads book and his journal. It was his journal that saved me. I memorized every word. He had written about this time, predicting it all as he saw it in his own words and in his own time. He had felt that mankind would not learn from his mistakes and would push the entire planet past the breaking point. They called these "tipping points" and he was right.

All I ever saw was death and destruction. It didn't seem to even matter anymore, death was everywhere and humans were behind it. I'd learned to kill, from my father, but only when it was necessary and I'd never killed another human. But I didn't think humans were sacred, there was much too much death in them for me to believe that. I just never had cause to kill another human, but I was always armed for the occasion if it occurred.

My dad had lots of guns and he'd made sure I knew how to use them, clean them and make each shot count. Ammunition was absolutely priceless, even when I was young. Now, ammunition is probably worth a month's supply of food, but I bet you nobody would trade that kind of food for a bullet or even for a whole box of shells. Food is gone now, nobody has any food and what good is ammunition really going to do you if there is no food?

My dad said the same thing about gold and silver. People were hoarding this stuff, believing it was going to help them when things got bad. They found out that this wasn't true, people that had the stuff they needed weren't willing to trade it for useless metal. They'd only trade their stuff for important stuff, like medicine, sometimes liquor (which nobody really needs either, but it was something people in those days still seemed to want) and stuff like boots and warm clothing. Some people got stupid and got drunk and it got them dead pretty fast. My dad had a little of this, but I didn't bother to take it, it's probably still in the cellar.

I did take the guns though, but I don't see how they're going to help me much now. I need help, I'm weak and sick now and there's nobody around now that could help. If the strompers catch me, it won't matter anyway and then I'll use my guns on them. This place is pretty good, if I'm awake when they come, I'll see them first and these guns are pretty good, I can probably kill a dozen before they make it up here.

But I'll be honest, I don't see the point. Why are we still tearing each other apart? Why are we still fighting over the last scraps like this? Haven't we done enough damage? My dad said it would come to this. He saw this coming. He said that the last human would be surrounded by empty shell casing as he killed off the last surviving animals on earth -- which would be another human. I don't know if he thought that that man would be me, but if he did, he never said it.

I don't want this to be me. What a terrible legacy this is! I can't believe it's come to this now, this is too horrible to bear. I think I'm glad that I'm sick, I don't want this to be me. If I die here and nobody comes, at least I will die without that.

But I hope that somebody finds this letter. I really do. I want them to see if they can, that some of us finally understood that there has to be a better way. There was no need for all this fighting, even though I didn't fight, I still feel like I was a part of it. I hid, and I ran, and I stayed away as much as I could, but I didn't have any choice. That's fighting, isn't it? Isn't it really the same thing? We're not working together, we're not trying to make things better, we're still working against each other, tearing it all apart.

This is terrible, but I don't see how it could have turned out any other way. My dad said so too --- he said that we'd keep doing this to each other until we finally destroyed it all because we were stubborn and foolish and stupid and we'd not even believe the evidence before our own eyes. He wrote about that -- a lot. Back then, when he started his journal, they'd not believe anything it seemed, even if they were standing right over it looking at it. I found that hard to believe, but not anymore. I seen it, in the eyes of others and in what my dad had wrote. Nobody would believe it could happen to them.

I wish my dad was here, but it's probably better that he's not. I don't think he'd have known what do now anymore then I do, but I don't know. I sure do miss him though.

I think I hear them coming now, there's a sound down there that that shouldn't be there. I need to stop writing now and get ready. I hope someone finds this -- tell whoever is left that I didn't want it to end this way. Tell them that even in all this death and agony and gray and ash that I believe we could have done it better -- a lot better. Tell that that if we had embraced life and all things living, this place would still be here for us. This was our home. Our only home.

Tell them, if there are anyone else out there alive to still tell -- to never, EVER forget what we did.

Tell them that if they get to live -- to live it right.

And tell them to take my dad's books and his journal. You'll understand why when you read them.

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Fade To Black

I've written a few chapters of a fictional book, "Fade To Black", that subscribers can sign up for. It's a free e-book of course, you will need to sign up to receive this.

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