The Agonist - Miscellany

In The Year 2525

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:07:07 -0800

Sabbath eve, November 6, 2009

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:05:27 -0800

Sean Paul Kelly asked a number of Agonist readers to predict what the world would look like in 30 years. I am hesitant to comply. For me, to predict events in the future is to prophesy. To prophesy incorrectly makes one a false prophet. So I am very cautious with even the simplest statements regarding the future.

I rarely say I will do anything tomorrow without adding, good Lord willing, as a qualifier.

To be honest, I have had mental images, glimpses if you will, of events I think may be part of this country’s future and they are quite scary. I don’t know if these images are divinely inspired or just creations of my own mind.

Thoughts I’ve had are disjointed and full of gaps, like looking through a key hole that remains blocked most of the time.

I interact routinely with people that claim insight into our future or who see things the rest of us don’t, hear voices the rest of us can’t. Many of these people are deemed crazy by the majority, as I am sure were prophets and seers of old. I am influenced by what they say, think and do.

I read prophetic writings almost complusively and have only recently read a book that altered the way I understand history and therefore our future: The fourth turning, by Strauss and Howe.

Before I start, a disclaimer: I am not predicting the future or offering much in the way of anything original here. Instead, I am interpreting what others have prophesied after trying to reconcile their predictions to the world in which I live. This is a narrow glimpse: it’d take a library full of books to consider all possibilities that have coursed through my head since the late 1970’s when I began studying this subject in earnest (and believe it or not, this has been an ongoing concern of mine since that time). I will provide very little in the way of detail, because to put it simply, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Stauss and Howe will tell you that history repeats itself, or comes near doing so in patterns resembling seasons of a year. Each season lasts roughly twenty years (some more, some less) and four seasons complete a saeculum.

The firt season, always following a period of crisis, is called the high, and corresponds with the spring of a year. Those born into this time are referred to as Prophets. In this particular saeculum, that’d be boomers, of which I am part (born 1943 – 1960. I’m doing this from memory as I gave the book to my dad after reading it and no longer have a copy.)

The second season is called the awakening; those born into this period are referred to as Nomads. Current nomads are Gen – Xers (born 1961 – 1981). This season corresponds with summer.

The third period is the unraveling. People born in the fall season are referred to as part of the Hero generation. This because they will become young adults during the fourth and last season – the crisis or winter season. Children born during the crisis are referred to as Artists. Today’s heroes are called Millenials. We’ve yet to come up with a name for the next crops of artists, the majority of which probably have not been born. For what it’s worth, my dad is part of the previous generation of artists, referred to as the Silent generation (born 1923 – 1942).

It took a book or several of them for Strauss and Howe to describe the patterns that define our history so I won’t rewrite what they suggest. Read the book. Suffice it to say that I am convinced. Seasonal patterns presented are similar to those an individual human goes through: birth, young adulthood, maturation, decline, and of course ultimately death (and rebirth, if you will). If you live a full life expectancy you will likely die in a time similar to that in which you are born.

Each crisis period since the founding of this country and for centuries before dating back to the Roman Empire and even before ended in a major war. The last three crisis periods here in the United States culminated respectively with the Revoltionary war, the Civil War, and World War II. In each case, the hero generation bore the brunt of fighting those wars. Notice that each of these occurred 80 years apart and came near the end of a twenty year economic, spiritual and moral collapse. Also note that each successive war was larger and more destructive in nature than the last. (Also notice that the stock market collapsed in 1929 and were are now living in 2009, eighties years later.) We just recently entered a period of crisis.

Here’s where I depart from Strauss and Howe’s predictions. I see these repetitive cycles like a harmonic vibration of sorts. Each wave of movement back and forth progressively gets larger and more powerful. Have you ever seen video of wind whipping a suspension bridge back and forth, up and down? If you have, you know at some point the structure fails and flies to pieces.

And that is what happens to empires as well. They survive a number of cycles but at some point a crisis period becomes so severe that they are broken to pieces, relegated to history. So not only are there saeculums, but also larger groups of saeculums, or epochs *probably not the word Strauss and Howe would use* that define history and denote the end and the beginning of a new era.

I don’t know if America, or the world at large survives the current crisis period in a form that would be recognizable to someone born antyime during the last century. Of course, each generation of prophets along the way asked the same questions and considered the same possibilities. Can we, will we survive this turbulent time?

Just because we survived three previous periods of crisis, doesn’t mean we survive the next.

Never before have > 6 billion people inhabited the earth. Not even close. So you can’t say that just because humans have never before affected the climate, we aren’t doing so now. In less than 100 years we have consumed half the known supply of extractable oil from the earth, oil that probably took millions of years to form. We’ve cut down trees, paved over swamps, ripped open land and allowed topsoil to erode. Balls of tar and plastic float in our oceans; coral reefs die, ice caps melt, species disappear.

Never before have we been so dependant on machinery, most of which is powered directly or indirectly by fossil fuels. Never before has such a large percentage of our population been so far removed from the land that feeds them. Never before has a single farmer fed some many others.

Naseem Taleb says the larger and more complex a system, the more redundancies that are built into that system, the less likely the system is to fail. But… When it does fail, (and it will), the greater the consequences of that failure.

Pride comes before destruction. The more you tell me how we can or won’t fail, the more I am convinced we must. We (not just the US, but modern man as a whole) built something approximating the tower of babel. It must be destroyed in order to save the planet.

There are some, the most evil among us, Malthusians also, but of a much more radical strain than I, that see the same things I see and decide they will engineer the collapse to the favor of their own based on race, religion, region, class, gender etc. They say, if it’s them or us, it’s going to be them and then they proceed to make it happen. Bush, Cheney, Gore and even your boy Obama are counted among them. Worse than these lie ahead.

It’s not that there aren’t non-violent fixes out there, it’s that they won’t be employed.

It will not be geologic constraints of peak oil that seals our fate, nor will climate change get us, although either of these in time presents grave threats. It will be the anticipation of these events and the reactions of those in power that bring about the worst disasters this world has seen.

Plans for the destruction of others will backfire. We will fall victim to devices of our own construction. We are entering a time of great upheaval: wars, famine, disease and natural disasters unparalleled in the history of this planet are soon to come if I don't miss my guess.

I’d say more, but it’d take a book. More than a book. And I don't have the time or space to do that here.

But take heart. The old must pass away so the new can rise. If something isn’t done to destroy civilization as we now practice it, the planet will be destroyed. And I don’t think that’s going to happen.

You see, in the end, I am an optimist.

My guess: Thirty years from now, the United States of America will have collapsed. The world’s population will number less than 2 billion. I don’t expect to be one of them. But you never know.

And the planet will begin to heal itself.

Collapse (the movie)

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:39:13 -0800

Opens today.

NY Times review.

Ryan Bingham played on the Letterman show last night

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:20:26 -0800

In case you missed it, video after the jump.

Vatican summit to discuss Church's fears that politics is losing its religion

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:44:32 -0800

Nick Pisa | Nov 4

DailyMail UK - Catholic convert Tony Blair is among several world leaders being invited to attend a top level summit with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the role of the Church in politics.

The two-day summit will be held at the Vatican and will include other Catholic politicians from all over the world, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. vice president Joe Biden, former Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Church officials have been quietly working on the conference, which will be called 'Witnesses of Christ in the Political Community', for several months.

Items to be discussed include the family, right to life, Christian roots, education and bio-ethics.
Vatican sources said that Pope Benedict XVI was becoming 'increasingly concerned' at how Christian values were being eroded because of various world governments introducing legislation against Catholic teaching.

Plug and play Beatles, no more scratched CD's!

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:59:00 -0800

The Beatles Store

Following the 9.9.09 debut of the digitally re-mastered catalogue on CD, Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music have announced the worldwide release of a limited edition of 30,000 Beatles Stereo USB apples on December 8th.

This unique, apple-shaped USB drive is loaded with the re-mastered audio for The Beatles' 14 stereo titles, as well as all of the re-mastered CDs' visual elements, including 13 mini-documentary films about the studio albums, replicated original UK art, rare photos and expanded liner notes.

It's Never Too Late to Try a War Criminal

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:18:55 -0800

The leaders of Argentina's horrible junta from the 1970s and 80s are finally facing trial:

The trial has begun of Argentina's last military ruler, Reynaldo Bignone, and five other retired generals.

The men are charged in connection with the alleged kidnapping, torture and disappearance of 56 opponents of the military government in the late 1970s.
...
Mr Bignone, 81, appeared frail and rocked back and forth in his chair as the charges were read out, correspondents said.

I hope Dick Cheney's heart holds out long enough to answer before a court of law for atrocities like this.

Michael Hudson

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:51:02 -0800

Educate yourself.

Ruppert on 9-11 " truthers"

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:24:35 -0800

Mike Ruppert is distancing himself (or trying anyway) from the 9-11 "truth movement", despite the fact that he wrote a book (Crossing the Rubicon) that laid out a scenario of means, motive and opportunity that points in the direction of a false flag event.

I understand his position. And I am glad to see him do this. We've more important matters at hand. Here. Now.

While we're at it, I'm distancing myself from the legalize drugs so we can all get high and save the economy movement.

Obama Signs Largest Military Budget since World War II

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:23:22 -0800

Earlier this week, President Obama signed into law the $680 billion FY 2010 Defense Authorization Bill, the largest such budget since the end of World War II. If you missed that aspect of the story, you weren’t alone. Many news stories chose instead to focus on the hate crime provisions tacked onto the bill.

I’ve often quarreled with the inclusion of superfluous legislative riders, and the hate crime provision is more superfluous than most. (Indeed, as my Cato colleague David Rittgers has pointed out, it might be worse than superfluous.)

But I want to focus on the president’s failure to halt the inexorable growth in military spending. His capitulation on a number of spending programs — even as he complains of rampant waste and abuse within the Pentagon — signals to American taxpayers that they should expect more of the same. It sends an equally harmful message to our friends and allies around the world: stand back, we’ll take care of it.

You see, most of the money we spend on our military is not geared to defending the United States. Rather, it encourages other countries to free-ride on the U.S. military instead of taking prudent steps to defend themselves.

The massive defense bill represents only part of our military spending. The appropriations bill moving through Congress governing veterans affairs, military construction and other agencies totals $133 billion, while the massive Department of Homeland Security budget weighs in at $42.8 billion. This comprises the visible balance of what Americans spend on our national security, loosely defined. Then there is the approximately $16 billion tucked away in the Energy Department’s budget, money dedicated to the care and maintenance of the country’s huge nuclear arsenal.

All told, every man, woman and child in the United States will spend more than $2,700 on these programs and agencies next year. By way of comparison, the average Japanese spends less than $330; the average German about $520; China’s per capita spending is less than $100.

The massive imbalance between what Americans spend on our military, and what others spend, flows directly from our foreign policy. Several decades ago, Washington opted to be the world’s policeman, and has ever since discouraged other countries from spending more on their own defense. President Obama has tacitly questioned this approach in the past, and has called on other countries to step forward and do more. But by signing this monstrosity, his actions drown out his words.

The president has defended his support for continued bloated military spending, with additional monies going especially to a larger conventional army, as a way to reduce the strains on our troops and their families. This is a noble impulse. But a far better way to relieve the burdens on our overstretched force is to rethink all of our global military commitments, and align our strategy to our means. A new grand strategy, predicated on self-reliance and restraint, would relieve the burdens from the backs of our troops and from taxpayers. That new strategy would compel other countries to finally assume their rightful responsibilities in defending themselves and their respective regions.

The governing class in Washington has consistently resisted such a change. It is enamored of its ability to manage not just the rest of the country, but indeed the rest of the world, and sees no reason to change. Neither, it would seem, does President Obama. By embracing a military budget explicitly geared toward sustaining the status quo, the president virtually ensures that other countries will not share in the costs of keeping the world relatively prosperous and at peace.

I’ll be discussing our massive military spending and other aspects of U.S. national security policy next Friday with Daniel Wirls, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, and the author of a forthcoming book on U.S. military spending that looks terrific. The event is sponsored by the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and will be held at the UC’s Washington Center from 10:00 to 11:30. To learn more and to register, visit their web site.

By Christopher Preble. To read more, visit http://blog.psaonline.org

Nomura's Jellyfish Capsize Japanese Trawler

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:45:24 -0800

NowPublic.com (Another interesting blog for your BookMarks, IMO)

A Japanese trawler capsized while trying to haul in a smack of Nomura's jellyfish. Nomura's jellyfish are massive creatures weighing over 400 pounds, and have begun crowding the Sea of Japan. The three crewmembers of the Daisan Shinsho-maru were rescued by another vessel.

Ewwwwww.

Science and Politics downunder

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:20:49 -0800

Philanthropy is not a life style choice for most of Australia's rich and famous.
But Australian science, especially the federal Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO )got a major financial boost due to a 10 year struggle fighting with HP, Apple, Dell et al. over the invention of WiFi; that was settled back in April.

However, Australian politics and science remain closely related, and casting aspersions on the ruling parties attitude to global emissions is not kosher.

A year on, has Barack Obama met the hopes of the world?

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:15:05 -0700

The Observer Debate.uk has some columnists pondering the middle east, racism, Pakistan , the environment and reality.

Chinese continue to provide consumer

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:14:00 -0700

goods.

Manuel's vision

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:04:07 -0700

Earlier this week, Ed Vulliamy of the Guardian came up for air after a number of months of immersion in the Mexican border scene. Julian Cardona, a mutual friend, suggested that he visit me. I suppose Ed figured I might provide additional insight into the murky world of Mexican gangs, violence and drugs, but he knows more details about the current wave of madness than I would. And, this is a subject of which I am tired of addressing. Drugs, violence and the rest of that crap are symptoms of the disease, rather than the cause, although at some point all of these contribute to each other in a seemingly endless feedback loop. The drug trade doesn't exist in a vaccuum.

Instead, Ed found me doing what I now do: farming, ranching, writing, contemplating on and preparing for the collapse of the country where I reside.

Before you relegate me to the doomsday shit pile and hit the X in the upper right corner of your computer, allow me a brief explanation. Collapse can but doesn’t necessarily mean total destruction. When the USSR collapsed, homes weren’t leveled; there was no instantaneous annihilation of people. It was the government and the economy that collapsed; the people were left to continue muddling along through a new and different world.

I handed Ed a copy of Ruminations from the garden and he devoured the book in short order. Then I took him out into our fields and found Abraham and Manuel gathering and burning fallen pecan limbs in anticipation of what I hope will be a meager native pecan harvest. Both Abraham and Manuel appear in the book. I figured meeting them makes the book real to Ed.

Abraham and Manuel, for those that haven’t read my book, see and hear things the rest of us can’t. I accept this at face value. Neither has anything to gain by sharing what they see and hear; both in fact open themselves up instead to possible derision and or villification by doing so. I consider the possibility that they commune with or are aware of spirits or beings which I can’t or don’t see, and I also consider the possibility that their minds generate these visions. A psychatrist would say they exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia.

Ed speaks some Spanish and something approximating the English I speak. Both Manuel and Abraham speak Spanish and some English. So Ed and the men conversed back and forth and I added clarifications in the language of one or the other when I detected that one hadn’t fully understood the other.

When I told Manuel that Ed was a writer, Manuel suggested that Ed should write down what he had to say, which, of course, I have been doing for some time now. Then Manuel began to share a vision he recently received.

Manuel said a time would come and soon, when highways are lined with people, wandering aimlessly. Their clothes will be worn and tattered. Those that try to help them will be unable to do so. They’ll be hungry, yet refuse food. Like Zombies, damaged somehow.

I have a brother, Bill, that told me he had seen a similar vision a few years back. He called them the wanderers.

Before you discount what Manuel told Ed or my brother Bill told me, consider this. In or about 2004, Manuel told me he had seen a vision. Birds in a huge cyclone shaped funnel, reaching up into the sky with the light of the sun shining through.

In 2006, while I was writing Ruminations from the Garden, for some yet unexplained reason, an abundant number of hawks and eagles gathered in the pastures near our farm and stayed for week or so. They numbered in the thousands. One day, as I was driving back from Gonzales, the whole lot formed a tornado-like swirling cloud of birds that reached as high into the air as the eye can see and the sun shined down through them.

And that is a fact.