Saturday, October 18, 2008

Bangles Stuck in the Head

Last weekend, during October Break, I took the extreme decision to buy the Greatest Hits album of The Bangles. I felt this would be a good way to get "Walk Like an Egyptian" out of my head. Sadly, the inverse occurred. There is not an hour (I am not joking, haha) that goes by where I don't open iTunes and listen to that song, put the CD in my CD player and listen to it, or turn on my iPod and listen to it.

After listening to the entire album, I've found some other songs that are very decent. One of them is in "In Your Room". Now, I don't know about you all, but Susanna Hoffs has the most seductive eyes I've ever seen. For those who don't know who she is, she's one of the vocalists, in the center-right of the four in the room. I commented to a friend yesterday, why can't today's pop be like this? Yes, Leona Lewis, pretty as is Rihanna. Very few write their own songs though, as The Bangles did. To think, I was only three in 1989 *sniff*.



[Matt, thanks for that - if you're interested, I also ran a post on her here.]

[thought for the day] saturday evening

A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.

[Victor Hugo 1877]

[famous pairs] through history … quiz



_______ and Cleopatra
Bonnie and _______
_______ and Juliet
Laurel and _______
_______ and Jonathan
Adam and _______
_______ and Abel
Victoria and _______
_______ and Sullivan
Rodgers and [not Trigger] _______
_______ and Watson
Ginger Rogers and _______
_______ and Tonto
Bogie and _______
_______ and Taylor
Tristan and _______
_______ and Cressida
Jeckyl and _______
_______ and Clark
Burke and _______


Answers

Antony, Clyde, Romeo, Hardy, David, Eve, Cain, Albert, Gilbert, Hammerstein, Holmes, Fred Astaire, The Lone Ranger, Bacall, Burton, Isolde, Troilus, Hyde, Lewis, Wills

[countryside] to melt a curmudgeonly heart


Just got back from the woods and this above, [excuse the telephone camera shot], is the type of scenery we had to put up with.

You know the sort of thing - strolls down tracks strewn with golden brown and purple leaves, the babbling brook, the curved bridge over the fast moving stream and a few rounds of Poohsticks*, a chap with a bicycle sitting on a bench at a table, curled up reading a book, as the warm sunshine filtered down through the canopy above, the old ladies sitting by the pond, pouring tea and enjoying a munch on a teacake.

That sort of thing.

* The World Poohsticks Championships take place annually at Day's Lock on the River Thames near Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. The event was started in 1983 as a fund-raising event for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The lockkeeper put out a box of sticks and a collection box and it soon became an annual event. It originally took place in January but in the icy weather of 1997 it was moved to March.

[quantum of solace] and the search for revenge


Why is it that most of us appear to like the Bond franchise and continue to anticipate the next offering, however bad or good it is? does it say something about human nature or is it the escapism?

The Quantum of Solace extension of the Casino Royale story is dark, it's about revenge and it's about Bond finding a quantum of solace in his pain over the death of Vesper, whom he truly loved.

It is also explicit about "Them", the ones this blog has railed against since its inception, the story of which is only now reaching the mainstream. I do feel some vindication in that, as the baddies topple governments in the film with the reminder, "This organization has people everywhere," a similar thing is in operation in real life.

"If they're everywhere, how come we've never heard of them?" asks M.

Precisely, Dame Judy, precisely.



Finally, the film is a grand statement on the futility of anger and revenge. Romans 12:20 again:

16; Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.
17: Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.
18: If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
19: Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
20: Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
21: Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.


First reviews here.

[who to listen to] one of the traders or not


This man, Simon Cawkwell, is making a killing on the crisis and has his views on the immediate future:

He may be a gambler through and through, but he says even he would never have attempted the "mad gamble" of the British Government over the past decade. He reserves particular criticism for Prime Minister Gordon Brown's actions in his time as a finance minister, blaming him for making cheap credit too easily available.

"People have been deceived on a massive scale," he says. "Brown knew about all of this. It was a mad gamble to keep on expanding credit forever but you cannot expand credit forever." He foresees deep problems ahead. "I expect massive unemployment. There will be deep impoverishment and bankruptcies," he says. "I really think it can lead to a civil unrest. It is really very serious. We're talking about people whose lives are shattered."

But, if the worst comes to pass, Cawkwell can see only one outcome for him personally. "I shall make a good deal of money," he says.

How much weight to place on his words? Well, he's in the market and so knows it from the buyer/seller point of view. I wonder how much he knows of the political agenda though? I mean the real agenda, the loony "hidden mysteries" stuff which I have looked into. I think he wouldn't know much of that - pragmatists can't get their minds round such seeming craziness.

Either way, his prediction and the loony agenda happen to coincide for the present.

Friday, October 17, 2008

[thought for the day] friday evening






... Nil desperandum.

[wag culture] les spills the beans

"In the past we became a bit of a circus … in terms of the whole WAG situation," Ferdinand said.

"It seems like there was a big show around the whole England squad. It was like watching theatre unfolding and football almost became a secondary element to the main event. People were worrying more about what people were wearing and where they were going, rather than the England football team.

That then transposed itself into the team."

[the new order] reasons to stay shtum




The idea in this post is to move from Almost Believable scenarios down to Bizarre and Almost Crazy scenarios by the end and to stretch the boundaries of credulity. My opinion on all this? Much easier to accept the early articles and much harder to fully accept the latter but none of it is without truth, IMHO.

On the grounds that it is better to have read something through than to have turned one's head away, here we go:

There is evidence that the banking crisis has been known about for a long time and did not arise simply through innocent incompetence.

There is also evidence that, far from the nationalization and the rescue packages being a knee-jerk reaction, they were quite cynically thought through a long time ago and are here to stay, at least in some form or other.

The type of people who go to the investment banker cocktail parties are not a great deal different in temperament to those involved in the “positive job discrimination” promoting people of a certain ilk into key positions, thereby perpetuating the type.

The nature of the people involved is illustrated in this link.

Sooner or later, when discussing people of a certain ilk being placed in key roles in both the public and private sectors, one has to mention Common Purpose. In this post, the comments are more illuminating than the post itself.

Reading more widely and digging deeper, which the investigative blogger tends to do, the breadth of the problem of these sorts of people spreading their tentacles across society is seen in pushes for Total Information Awareness and other infrastructural moves.

One recurring theme in all this is the interconnectedness of the people involved - the networking and the way the same names keep popping up is illuminating.

If this was just a question of a bunch of ambitious, error prone non-comps blighting our lives, it would be terrible but not nearly as terrible when the law is invoked to enable their craziness.

This is particularly so when the principle of arbitrary interpretation is applied, i.e. "You are a criminal because I interpret the law that way and my friends in high places agree."

When this principle is extended to citizens’ juries, in which incumbent CP types, in regions such as the South-West and in particular Bristol, both determine the composition of those juries and then administer guidelines on how to act, based on the CP interpretation of right and wrong, then this is like a Nuremberg show trial.

Even more worrying is that the principle of arbitrary surveillance and arrest is worldwide, e.g. in the US, in Europe and in the UK. In the UK, they have 28 days to do what they want to you but remember it almost became 42 days but didn't, thanks be to the Lords.

One way of dealing with the dissident, recalcitrant, seditious insurgent, as a totalitarian state would describe a caller for free speech and the right to dissent, is to go in for a bit of group stalking - most effective and almost impossible to pin down. Here and here. Most stalking is one-on-one, male on female but there is also this worrying group thing, where the aim is to silence a dissenting voice or one who would expose you or maybe even someone who disagrees politically.

More insidious is the welcome awaiting someone unfortunate enough to be "detained". One has to smile at the hullabaloo over waterboarding when the real thing is so much worse. Here and it continues here. Woodrow Wilson spoke of the network being interlocked and insidious and I've seen no evidence it isn't. Professional guilds are an accepted entity and sections of them, at the highest level ,are likely to be of a similar mind and global in scope.

That's why a psychiatrist from one country, who has operated in another, can be criminally charged in a third.

And it is not an isolated case - it is only one of the rare ones which found it to trial. Worse is the sustained, long term experimentation which has gone on in the security environment for decades, was formerly denied but is now mainstream knowledge.

One could stop the investigation here and conclude that it was just mind games but are you actually aware of what they entail, these mind games?

Naturally, there are those who have reason to dismiss this out of hand, even to working towards the acceptance of the False Memory Syndrome as a recognized psychological phenomenon. The problem with this is the testimony of a considerable number of "victims" who recount similar stories and one account from a "former perpetrator", whose testimony I'm still searching the web, trying to find the definitive rebuttal.

All the above may be true, it may be fantasy. One thing I know is that there are people who now have arbitrary power of arrest and I, for one, do not fancy what might happen, once inside. Nobody outside need ever know.

Have you ever heard of Mr. Buttle?

[which was more fun] 20s or 50s

Comparing two eras - if you had to be transported to one or the other, which would you choose?  

1925



1955

[using technology] a modest proposal for real time democracy


Not my original idea:

1. We all have either a device attached to the tele or we use the Black Berry or we use our mobile and our National Insurance number gives us ID which enables us to vote at any time on a number of legislative proposals.

2. All the pollies have been sacked, political parties disbanded and the civil service trimmed down to its new executive function of feeding proposals in and administering them as and when they arise.

3. Proposals are mooted by any member of the public [maybe one per month] and go onto a database. Then, a sort of mailticker thing operates where they are added to the list as they come in and people can vote on them. We can view them on the tele screen or on the phone or wherever, at any time.

4. A simple majority passes the proposal with no quorum required, following a two week deliberation period. The question of frivolous or repeated proposals would self-actuallize and only serious, documented items would get the consideration they deserve.

5. If people wanted some kind of background to vote on, there'd be a comments thread with subfolders and so on, with finally a Yea folder or Nay folder where you or I, who had been sitting on the couch discussing this issue, could switch on the mike and feed it in to the little box. Voom - it's in the folder for someone in another part of the country to listen to if they wish.

6. Once a proposal passes, the civil service implements it in the light of other similar proposals on the issue. Example - the Iraq President gets lippy; someone proposes we nuke him. It wouldn't pass but if the majority wanted, well, we'd nuke him.

7. It would have the eventual effect of raising the political consciousness of ordinary people to issues affecting their life, government wastage would be reduced to negligible proportions, the pollies couldn't ruin things, freedoms would be protected and the people who were most interested would run things but not within a formal structure like a party.

8. Another advantage would be to make government well nigh unworkable and proposals slow to implement. Good - they should be well thought out first. You might say - hey, what if the army is needed for an emergency? Well, someone would propose it and the military commanders would do the rest - it's not the job of government. It would prevent high-ups having their little spurious war.

9. All right, you say - it might be a nice idea but there's fat chance of those in power giving it up that easily. Well, that's true. For now.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

[thought for the day] thursday evening


In the light of the Menezes' killer defence that, as they had failed to receive the order to kill, then they took that to mean permission to use their own judgement on the matter, that's a bit of a worry for the average cit.

One person I would not wish to be named in such a highly charged atmosphere and with officers following that policy, is Will, as in "Fire at Will!"

[george w bush] what will history say


A Republican view

* He'll be remembered as the President who, despite terrorist attacks, preserved civil rights, kept the economy strong through tax cuts, made the tax system more progressive, and finally fought back against the terrorists.

* He'll be remembered as the first president to try to bring us together after the divisive Clinton years and the President who rebuilt the military.

* He'll be remembered as the President who presided over the fastest, biggest aid package ever after Katrina.

* He will be remembered for liberating 50 million Muslims who spent their lives under murderous regiemes. He protected us from future attacks that we believed were just around the corner.

* Bush lowered taxes and tried to impose his will on a democratic marority house and senate

A Democrat view

With Ronald Reagan we remember:

* The Cold War
* The Berlin Wall
* The assassination attempt
* The Iran-Contra scandal
* Reaganomics
* Nancy’s “Just say ‘no’” policy
* Grenada
* Booming 80's economy resurgence


With George Herbert Walker Bush we remember:

* “Read my lips, no new taxes”
* Desert Storm
* Dan Quayle misspelling ‘potato’
* The fall of the Soviet Union
* Americans With Disabilities Act
* Panama / Noriega
* Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I)


With William Jefferson Clinton we remember:

* Monica Lewinsky
* A thriving economy
* Somalia
* NAFTA
* DMCA
* Serbia / Kosovo
* The Branch Davidians
* Elian Gonzalez
* Soaring public opinion
* Low unemployment


So what will we remember of George Walker Bush?

* September 11, 2001
* The Patriot Act
* The Afghan War
* The Iraqi Quagmire
* Torture
* Water Boarding
* Abu Ghraib
* Falsified intelligence
* Suppression of climate science
* Sinking economy
* Soaring gas prices
* Sinking public opinion
* The Katrina debacle
* Cheney shooting someone in the face
* Wire Tapping
* Loss of Habeas Corpus
* Veto of stem cell bill
* Inflation
* Rising unemployment
* Firing of U.S. Attorneys
* Alberto Gonzalez
* Scooter Libby
* Enron
* Tyco
* Blackwater
* Faith Based Initiatives

Source

[kate middleton] must she await her fate

Courtesy http://www.katemiddletonfans.com/


This post a year and a half ago, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, has now moved up to be my most accessed, so it's clearly not just the Brits who are interested:

Кейт Миддлтон , совсем недавно воссоединившаяся со своим женихом Принцом Уильямом, уволилась с поста байера аксессуаров для сети бутиков модной марки Jigsaw, завершив тем самым свою лишь недавно начавшуюся карьеру в моде.

The Russkies clearly see her as a fashion icon. Also, how did she drive on a phone, instead of in a car? Some saw her as a little dowdy but is she a very naughty girl? Either way, she will now have to wait eight years if she is to be the new Princess.

The good news though is that gays prefer Harry to William so she is fairly safe that way, apparently. Now, as for the split between her mother and the Palace:

Relations between the Middletons and the Royal family suffered last year when it was claimed that Mrs Middleton had used the word "toilet" and uttered the phrase "pleased to meet you" on meeting the Queen.

... that seems to be over. However, just to make sure you don't fall into the trap that Middleton Snr did, Mary Killen gives some added advice:

"And did you know that the word 'meal' is meant to be very common? You should always say 'lunch', 'dinner' or 'breakfast'. And there are very small, subtle distinguishing factors, like never reading a novel in a drawing room. If you read a coffee-table book, that's fine, because everyone knows it's a short-attention-span thing. But a novel makes you unavailable."

She goes on:

"I know people who think tomatoes are common; they won't have a tomato in the house. Another indicator is marmalade. Thin, runny, hand-made marmalade is a sign of being upper class, whereas firm, gelatinous marmalade is common.

So don't be plebs, people and before passing the bottle across the table to your fellow dinner guest, be sure to wipe the [bottle] neck first - it's gauche to swig from an unwiped neck. Kate would be horrified. Finally, latest news seems to be:

It’s been reported that Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie refused to make space in the front row of a fashion show for Pippa Middleton, Kate’s younger sister. After some embarrassment, she found a seat elsewhere.

Thought you were all dying to know that.



[christmas] just around the corner


It has probably not escaped your attention that we are coming up to Christmas and winter.

Most people are worried about differing things - the employed with the prospect of that going astray, the unemployed with being able to eat and keeping a roof over the head. Householders are worried about mortgages and debt and everyone is worried about prices. The weather doesn't help either nor the seemingly increasing demands within each job - it's an employer's market and yet they themselves are deeply worried.

The two most sustaining things are one's family [if they exist] and the sheer beauty of Britain, in our case and your country in yours. A foreigner asked me a month ago how the British people came to saddle themselves with such laws, such debt and such spiralling prices. This post is for him.

The "people" did no such thing.

Everyone here knows that Blair and Brown did the bulk of the damage, following on from what went before. From the time of the 1991 Baden-Baden and 1993 Vouliagmeni conferences, the die was cast and the country was subject to a con job. In this, the people collaborated the day after Walpurgis, 1997 when the would-be President of Europe was swept to power but theirs was not true guilt unless ignorance can be considered guilt.

What we have here is the people being kept in ignorance by a captive MSM who direct their euphoria and disdain like playing a violin but the newly burgeoning blogosphere, post-2005, has tried to dispel that ignorance the best way they could. Long before that, the mechanism of power was well oiled and the people themselves were living an illusion of a democratic society where the locally preselected member appeared to be accountable. He is accountable but not entirely to his constituents.

Long ago, the banking system broke the nexus between prices and income and inserted credit into the breach, playing on the Thatcherite desire for the good life, to which all people are susceptible. Why not? People have a right to hope for a comfortable life for themselves and for their families.

I use the extreme adjective "evil" to describe the cynical process where someone plays on people's ignorance and susceptibilities to achieve personal gain or mayhem or both. This adjective is not thrown about with abandon but applies to any who know something is not right and yet they do it, to the detriment of other people, having foreseen and worked out the consequences long before. That is what evil means to me and in its milder form - "mischief".

Sub-prime mortgages were never going to be sustainable and the short-termism in those and in the way the market operated, exacerbated by the now irreconcilable price-income gap and given people's fervour to maintain the good life by hook or by crook - it could never have gone any other way. When the people finally woke up to that and to the state's tightening of the data collection and security screws, using a questionable bombing as a pretext, it was pure Hegel.

How to stop the juggernaut?

Look at the weapons - zilch. At least the U.S. and Russia recognize the principle of recall but not here. One waits for an arbitrarily announced date for an election and is then presented with a choice between two similar characters as one's leaders. And not even directly, unless one is voting within those constituencies. The system is rigged and has always been rigged to stymie any real challenge to the power structure. What then is the alternative?

The direst alternative of all - collectivization and nationalization of the means of production and distribution, held by the central government - the process is underway with the banks now. Do you really believe that the crisis occurred completely by chance? Do you really doubt that the ultimate solution has to be the declaration of extraordinary powers and a coalition government, just as it was in WW2?

There were powers that hoped all this would come to fruition at the end of the last century and for various reasons it didn't - everything runs past the due date on a macro scale. So we've been living on borrowed time since the early 90s, in fact.

The person who writes of the future is always on a hiding to nothing and leaves himself open to "conspiracy theorist" charges, to marginalization and resentment if the thing comes to pass. In 2002, it was so clear that Iraq would not see a troop pullout that I wrote emails to a friend about it. He thought this was another crazy idea I'd had. A couple of decades ago, I said that a friend's child would be captain of a prestigious school within three years and she was. Even a fellow blogger who runs an economics blog conceded that certain things which I'd written had come to pass.

It was so bleedin obvious - everything pointed to it. There is zero mystery in this - just a sense of history, a voracious appetite for research and an eye for a repeated pattern. Anyone can do it.

So where does that lead us? Well for most, battening down the hatches for the coming winter but for some poor souls, Tony Sharp was on the money with his touching post on the unemployed. He'd hardly appreciate being associated with a left field post such as this and yet ... may I quote some of his piece?

I know from past experience what it is like to be laid off not long before Christmas, in my case while having a mortgage to pay and having a baby less than a year old to provide for and only receiving a month's money in severance - which is more than a lot of these people will be getting. I feel awful for those people who are losing their jobs.

I identify with their fears and understand the pressures that have suddenly emerged in their lives. I was physically sick with worry about where the next salary payment was going to come from and how the bills were going to be paid. So I can imagine what it must be like for those who find themselves in this position through no fault of their own.

It is easy to look at that statistic of up to 164,000 losing their jobs and forget that we are talking about real people with feelings and emotions. Real people with families and commitments. Real people who may suffer difficulties in their relationships when they most need someone to stand by them and be strong with them.

I just want people to stop and think about what is happening around us and to spare a thought for those who will suffer stress, feelings of rejection and experience depressing hopelessness. Let us hope they get the support they need to find opportunities, grab them and take control of their lives again quickly, before any lasting damage is done.

Amen, Tony.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

[thought for the day] wednesday evening


We can't do a lot about our economic situation and we can't change how we look all that much but what we can do is spice up our conversations with Franglais. Miles Kingston led the way and others followed:

* A man is accused of driving his car "avec toute la finesse d'un Rangers fan"
* A door-to-door seller assures his customers "je ne suis pas un nutter religieux"
* Deux biers s'il vous plait, as vite as vous aime
* Two chien chaud and a coke s'il vous plait
* Je voudrais un top-up, luv
* Sur votre bicyclette, mate

Je hope that ce little piece ai improve votre franglais un peu, aw-rite?

[blogfocus] twelve of the best today


The Broadsheet Rag has its goon of the year award and there are some hot contenders.

Calum Carr has found a new medical procedure the NHS is carrying out - humorectomy.

Guthrum is into the illumination of mediaeval babes.

Liz Hinds says: "George was pinned down by a nasty little bitch today."

Tony Sharp asks you to spare a thought for the jobless and homeless this Christmas.

The Valleys Mam says that when visiting Gwynned, to take a portaloo.

Bryan Appleyard says that in the light of the divorce, G-d might even find Dawkins.

Eurodog says 64 percent of British dog owners would rather cuddle their dogs than their partners.

L'Ombre
explains the financial crisis in one picture.

Tiberius reports on an absolutely disgraceful incident you should know about.

Trixy of shoe fame reports on those handgun heels.

... and finally, Vox agrees it's best not to vote for either of them.

[voxels] keep your count up


As you age, to keep your voxel count up, you should be googling on the net:

Brain activity registered by the fMRI is measured by a unit called voxel. Based on the UCLA study, the volunteers who had prior Internet experience had 21,782 voxels while Googling, while those with little Internet browsing experience registered 8,646 voxels only. But Small added that over time the inexperienced Googlers would benefit from the brain stimulating activity as well.

What's a voxel? Even after reading this, I still don't know. Anyway, why stop at googling when you can be setting up a net business? According to the Early Retirement site, there a four key pieces in developing a successful internet retirement business:

- Finding a focused target market
- Finding a product people are hungry for
- Developing a marketing strategy
- Automating your business

Pretty logical, yes? The trick is in finding it and then having the drive and acumen to build it. It takes a particular mindset and a lack of fear in this current economic climate. A bit of business sense would help too.

[paperless paper] technology on the train


One of these "read in the MSM and comment" posts, I'm afraid.

The electronic newspaper, developed by Plastic Logic's factory in Dresden by British engineer Dean Baker and cohorts, tries to bridge the gap between the pleasure of turning the pages of a real newspaper and the annoyance factor to those around.

Depending on the cost of the new device which is shaped like a tabloid and can electronically access any news of the day, many might be buying them when they are released next year.

Here's one already in operation. And another.

Will they take on in their new flexi-format? Would you take one of these, rather than the newsstand variety, on the train with you to work?

[interim report] the busy disease

This is the third time I've altered this post and I'm not doing it again. I don't understand the way some people carry on. I made a statement this morning:

The character assassination thing. The way it works, IMHO, based on what I've been able to glean, is that, with this site and my emails monitored, someone appears to have the ability to hack and alter mails. We know this because of an email which is going around, purportedly written by me, which was not. Quoting out of context is another method. The stalker notes anyone who seems to comment a bit at this blog, follows them to their blog and starts friendly commenting then emailing as a charming "friend", following sales techniques - and I directly quote him:

What wins is walking in thinking 'I'm going to close you down, mate. I'm going to cut off your options and you WILL do what I want.'

The dialogue phase begins, to determine the things the other person has concerns for, latching on to them and playing up to them, e.g. with an army guy to talk in that "we're all patriotic Brits" way or if it is a feminist, to agree on feminism and have an intellectual discussion on this and other issues which builds her self-esteem or if an English nationalist - to be in sympathy with that.

The thing is - the recipient never knows he/she is being played for a sucker and no one likes to admit they can fall for something. I get very angry if someone tells me I am naive and have been manipulated - angry at the person who suggests this. Human nature. More than one ex-friend has said, "Oh, he's an interesting guy, very intelligent." By contrast, my intransigence comes over very badly, to the point you might almost say I've lost the plot. Yes, when you are being worked on, it really does appear that way. It's very real.

Once this has been done comes the hard sell, always introduced softly at the beginning, coupled with the "wronged person" stance. Works a treat almost every time and quite a few ex-friends of mine have fallen for it. Finally it is compounded by the irritation both my manner and this lady's cause in the way we blog. By provoking us, we lash out on our blogs and vindicate the view that we are seriously unbalanced. If it goes quiet for a time, there's another provocation activated which no one sees, we post on it and we look like the obsessives.

That's just part of what is going on. It's very real, he's very persuasive and great damage has been done so far. The purpose is twofold - to shut down my blog and to separate me from a certain lady who knows too much. There are four fellow bloggers who are onto him now and it's better than being alone, I can tell you. I can even admire the efficacy of the technique he uses but still ... it's pretty nasty, isn't it?

It remained all day and then I replaced it, this evening, with a statement that the point had been made and that unless something new came to light, that was all I had to say on the matter. Naturally this was misinterpreted to mean that I was backtracking, which of course is bollocks. So I'm going to say one last thing:

When I write something, I don't backtrack. I back every word and remain deeply angered about a woman who has been wronged and sigh about all the energy expended to bring me down too. However, there comes a time to stop speaking, when the point has been made and I consider it has now been made. However, I am expecting further revelations at her end and wait with bated breath and support.

Now I'm not altering this post again, all right?

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

[eternal fame] how many would pass the test



The economy's collapsed, war has come, everybody has been zapped and there is a colony of people left together in a dugout in the ground in the year 2095. They are Chinese, Russian, American, Canadian, British, South African, Australasian, Zimbawean, Japanese, Egyptian, Persian and Argentinian.

They start to talk of whom they remember from history. How many figures from the past, ancient and not so ancient, do THREE QUARTERS OF THEM remember?

Can you hazard a guess as to who they'd be? I'd venture that there'd be no more than eight or so.

Who would be on your list? I've used Survey Monkey as it seems the best for this.

Click here to give your opinion

[bond girl] can she stay simple and unaffected

One of the reasons I like this lady and many others from that part of the world is because though about half are lazy and get nowhere, taking the easy way out, the other half are committed, desperate to learn everything they can and they retain their humility later.

As someone who lived over there, there are other women I find more attractive, especially in her views on morality but in the case of this person, someone who has come this far - supermodel and Bond girl - and to retain that level of humility - that's something really special.

We all like our heroes and heroines to be self-effacing and women are forever saying men prefer the compliant type but analogously, as someone who appreciates every single visitor at this site and is forever fearful he is going to lose them all, I can understand where she is coming from.

[ufo] or a disagreeable dinner that night


I love these things because they challenge the accepted beliefs, the standard dogma:

Steve Robey remembers it like it was yesterday. The now-retired air traffic controller was working the night shift at the Melbourne Flight Service Unit on Saturday, October 21, 1978, when the call came in at 7.06pm.

Pilot Frederick Valentich, flying from Moorabbin Airport to King Island to pick up some crayfish, reported that a strange aircraft was "playing a game with him" and he wanted to know if any military planes were in the area. Both men were puzzled as there was no known air traffic in the vicinity apart from the 20-year-old RAAF air training corp instructor's plane.

Mr Valentich reported that the unknown aircraft had four bright lights and had buzzed him a number of times at great speed. He told Mr Robey the object was orbiting on top of him and "it's got a green light and is sort of metallic, like it's all shiny on the outside".

Then it vanished.

Mr Valentich, who had had his pilot's licence for two years, said his plane's engines began rough idling and coughing when the object reappeared. He told Mr Robey he planned to continue flying to King Island. Then came the message that the object had suddenly reappeared above him. "That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again … it is hovering and it's not an aircraft."

They were Mr Valentich's last words. A still unidentified metallic noise came over the radio during the next 17 seconds, then the transmission ended abruptly. Mr Valentich and his single-engine Cessna 182L were never seen again, despite an exhaustive seven-day land and sea search. A Department of Transport investigation concluded that the disappearance could not be explained.


Now, what to make of that?

So-called rationalists who would say: "Oh, for goodness sake - it was a trick of the light, the pilot could have been drinking etc etc etc," are guilty, in my opinion, of the "leap to rationalization", a deeply narrow view which maintains that nothing exists outside the physical plane. And yet that stance is not borne out by the evidence of history.

How many times has someone professed a radical view, only to be torn down? Look at Galileo. Look at Sackerson's site, for example - They Laughed at Noah. Surely he would be up for new ideas on phenomena with a blogname like that, despite his world view being rooted in economics?

The CIA does mind control? Why not, for goodness sake? Stands to reason. There is a resurrected Jesus Christ? Why not? There are UFOs? Why not, if there are spirits? If there is a G-d, then there are spirits too. Or are you saying there's no G-d, no life force? What is the human spirit then? A conjunction of synapses or the power moving between them?

Please prove that assertion tht there is no G-d. Matt Murrell has been trying to do that for the past year and a half, to my knowledge and is still in the same place.

Unacceptable answers, by the way, are: "It's a myth," "Everyone knows," "It's been scientifically proven" [that one always affords a good laugh] or to raise the eyebrows to heaven and say the one asserting the idea has "lost the plot".

Come on, rationalists - science demands that you disprove the assertion. The onus is on you as well as on the asserter.

In the words of JMB, "My case rests."


[biased history] and the boiling frog principle


Political power could be said to be the ability to influence other people’s way of thinking and vital ways are through the education system, film and literature.

That’s why the history books have been revised by certain types hell bent on presenting a distorted view of reality to children, e.g. here and the way it is achieved here; the rectors and vice chancellors come from this group of likeminded people and the children grow up in a world bereft of broader learning, the more unfettered accounts of what is good and what is not. As Wiki put it, it is: "the process that attempts to rewrite history by minimizing, denying or simply ignoring essential facts."

What is even more worrying is that these people truly believe that they are doing good, that by imposing their world view and vilifying any dissent, thereby becoming the new tyrants, the new USSR, they are doing vital work.

They are, wittingly or unwittingly – for the new socialistic feudalism.

An example is a book I dipped into for the post on feudalism – Brockhampton Reference World History, Geddes and Grosset Ltd, New Lanark, Scotland, 1995. There is no stated author, no listed credentials for writing the book and yet it is part of a series which has clearly done the rounds.

A child’s grandmother goes into a shop, maybe a newsagents, sees World History, thinks it will be educational for the grandchild and buys it. The only thing protecting the grandchild is that he is more into the World of Warcraft and other enemy zapping fun on the net than reading a historical tome.

The book itself.

By and large, the commentary follows the traditional line at the beginning – the blind acceptance of evolution et al and then the first eyebrow raiser appears: "... in Sumeria, some had serious wealth. " It's therefore either a revisionist or less learned scholar who uses jargon of the current day. Nothing wrong with that but it is indicative.

Then we get to “the Hebrew creation myth, which … [was later] written into the book of Genesis” and the eyebrows are now sky high. Now we get to the nitty-gritty. A section appears, called “Male Centred Religion”, [no, I’m not making it up – it’s on page 360 - and don’t forget that there is no stated author to this "history"], dismissing Christianity as “woman is depicted as a secondary creature” and “the cult of the virgin”.

It is my bet that any feminist reading this would think, “Yes, and what’s wrong with that?”

What’s wrong with it is that this is a supposedly evenhanded, unbiased history. I read the Hebrew myth chapter to my friend and he immediately picked up on that “myth” reference as out of place, even though he has no religion himself.

The feminist would continue, “But children have to see the appalling treatment women have received,” and so on. Look, we’re not discussing that point here. What we are discussing is that a quite categorical statement is being made, under the guise of impartiality.

It goes on, in a later chapter – “they picked up the words of the writer from the Babylonian exile and declared him and announced him as the saviour of the world”. Sheesh! Not a word about what He himself was claiming during his lifetime, not a word about the lack of corroborating evidence that He was not what He claimed, not a word about Josephus, Tacitus, et al.

And this person calls herself a historian?

By the time she described Spain as a “great Arab culture replaced by a fanatical Christian state”, Christian state being a contradiction in terms anyway, I’d had enough. “Illiterate worshippers”, as distinct from “the common people who were devout”, was the last straw.

The standard retort is that all history is biased. Not all - some historians have a love of history rather than any particular axe to grind.

Take David C. Whitney, The American Presidents, Guild America, Nelson Doubleday, 2001, in which the Bush/Gore battle in Florida was mentioned. Though I suspect the author and daughter are Democrats, it is really difficult pinning them down through the selection of sources or through the use of adjectives, as to where this bias is.

Similarly with another touchy point – the Kennedy assassination. He wrote that the accepted view at the time was that Oswald had done it alone but that this was progressively challenged in the coming years, with no final conclusion being reached. Not a word about his own point of view on that.

Reviews include:

"This book offers as much as I really wish to know. David Whitney had given us a very nice bit of helpful work here. Recommend this one highly."

"For those who would like to know about US president for the first time, or for just support your knowledge, this book is excellent enough to fulfill your needs. A must buy for junior high students. "

The most notorious examples of revisionism include the expurgating of Shakespeare, which admittedly has being going on for a long time. This has now been stepped up, particularly in the late 90s [and the process is now almost complete], to bowdlerize Shakespeare or even ban him outright. Professor Levin is one of the more respected academics to take the revisionists to task over this:

Professor Levin's deepest disagreement with the feminists turns on their blindness, as he sees it, to the sense of ''resolution and catharsis'' that he believes is essential to the genre of tragedy. For tragedy to work, he says, the tragic hero must discover the cause of his unhappy ending in some fatal flaw in himself.

But this, he says, is impossible in the feminist readings of Shakespeare, because none of the heroes ''seem to learn what these critics insist is the thematic lesson of the play - namely, that the concept of masculinity itself is to blame for the tragedy.''

This post is about the shoddiness of much modern “scholarship”; it’s about the way children are fed this pap and grow up with jaundiced views on major and minor issues and how, in adulthood, even evidence to the contrary will not dislodge these misconceptions from their minds.

It’s about the way that a certain type of person is completely convinced of his/her impartiality and happily hums along, rewriting history in the most shoddy way, which is then lapped up by the new powers that be and distributed around the nation as “the truth”.

It’s about boiling frogs – the principle that if you suddenly immerse a frog in boiling water, it will jump out but if you put it in water and then gradually heat the water, it doesn’t notice it is being boiled and won't jump out.

As for that scientific principle, it will have to wait for another post on the omnipotent callousness of science.

Monday, October 13, 2008

[at the ballet] no time to be ill


A young couple had just taken their seats at the ballet when the chap in front seemed in a bit of trouble. He didn't respond at first when they asked him and on leaning over the seat, they could see he was doubled up in pain.

They asked the usherette, who called for the first aiders, who asked the young man where he was from.

"Ughhh ... from the dress circle," he groaned.

[house of lords] giving the wrong answer again

Like the Irish in their referendum, the Lords has given the wrong answer again, this time on the 42 days detention bill:
Peers voted to keep the current 28-day limit on pre-charge detentions by 309 votes to 118 - a majority of 191. Later the home secretary said it would be dropped from the counter-terrorism bill but would be in a new bill to be made law "should the worst happen".

The Lords are probably in a bit of trouble over this now and there could well be some more "reforms" in the offing. Here are some from the 2005 proposals:

The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 will lead to the creation of a separate Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, to which the judicial function of the House of Lords, and some of the judicial functions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, will be transferred. In addition, the office of Lord Chancellor has been reformed by the act, to remove his ability to act as both a government minister and a judge.

The Lord's position in the EU regionalization will be interesting, to say the least. For those shaking their heads in disbelief that anyone could support the anachronistic Lords in this day and age, let me say that if you remove the principle, then you effectively have a unicameral assembly left, subject to the EU. Is that what people want?

[cat's life] zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


There's a cat where I'm staying and she and I had the old territory discussion right at the start. Once she realized she could still go about, sit, lie, curl up and generally cat it wherever she wanted, things slipped into a pleasant routine.

She seems to like the room I'm in; she seems to like the top of the bed I'm in; she sometimes moves up to rub the nose and then goes away again. Her favourite places are lying on my outdoor shoes, in the living room near the heater and under the bed.

Obviously, when she points the nose for egress at night, she's heading for a knees up on the town but not when it's drizzly cold. Then she wants in. I asked her about her life one evening and she looked long and hard at me, blinked, narrowed the eyes and then head-butted my hand, whatever that was meant to indicate, turned over on her back and did a snake impression.

In the morning, I was warned, the food had better be ready and the water changed, otherwise there would be ructions. So it always is ready.

Just now there was a little comedy of errors. I ran up to the room I'm in and went to get the flip flops but she was using them. Not a greedy or an imperious sort at all, she jumped off and headed out of the door, then turned and watched. I headed towards the door and she moved to the stairs. I went for the stairs and she went down them first. I followed. She propped and looked again. I walked towards the kitchen and she went through first.

Once in there, she turned and asked me why on earth we'd come down here when there was a perfectly warm heater and bed upstairs. Humans are strange.

[quick quiz] to lighten things up a bit


1. What was Coco Chanel's real first name?

2. Who was Richard Nixons's chief-of-staff [known to insiders as the Gatekeeper]? H.R.......

3. At the Waco mass suicide, what was the name of the cult?

4. What was the nickname of John Birks Gillespie, a nickname which is currently utilized by a well known UK blogger?

5. Philby, Burgess ...... which two names follow this?


Answers

Gabrielle, Haldemann, Branch Davidian, Dizzy [ie], Maclean, Blunt

[current meltdown] target the real criminals in this

Oddson and Bush in accord - wonder what about

My question is about the CBI:

The Icelandic banks were highly leveraged and large relative to the domestic economy. So are those of the UK and Switzerland. None has been immune to the devastating effects of the crisis. And there may be significant contagion from Iceland to countries vulnerable to capital flow reversals.

Glitnir had to request a short-term loan from the Central Bank of Iceland, which refused. Rather than taking Glitnir into administration, the CBI enforced nationalisation on punitive terms.

Most eyes are on the over-leveraging and the stark greed in operation at High Street bank level. Few question the role of the CB in this. After all, the one who bails out is not the criminal, right?

This blog has always gone straight for the jugular, rather than for the bleeding hands. In the U.S., it aims straight for the heart of the Morgan empire. In other countries the very first question is about the CB or Reserve Bank. Regulators know full well what is going down at all stages, they conduct a hands-off approach in one sense but the bottom line is that they know what is happening and are interwoven with the whole banking system.

This over-leveraging, the hedge funds, the whole mismanagement – all that was known about in the interconnected banking world. I keep coming back to the FOMC report of October, 2006, [admittedly the last one I read in full], in which predictions were made for the future up to 2011. The Fed’s pronouncements and the data they utilize can have a profound effect, e.g. in this assessment by an analyst of that report in the context of mortgages:

However, by specifically naming the sector in their press release, the Fed may have just shifted undue focus to Housing … Housing data is notoriously misleading for one very simple reason -- it measures new contracts but does not account for actual closings …

The Fed's stance on housing is consistent with Bernanke's prior remarks that the housing slowdown will shave 1.00% off growth and markets were ready for that. What makes me uneasy, though, is that markets may be forced to use misleading housing data to reshape their expectations of inflation.

Sackerson writes:

If everyone can handle the the cash call when it comes, good; if not, maybe a domino effect - one failure unbalancing another in a chain reaction. In particular, will hedge funds, who tend to play with borrowed money, be able to honour their contracts, or will they be the weak link in the chain?

If this is even obvious to amateurs like myself, then why would it not have been obvious to Bernanke and Co., professionals in the sphere? We come back to the same old question – was the “hands-off” at significant moments a known-known and therefore deliberate or was it mere arrogant incompetence?

If it was deliberate incompetence, then the reason for it is social destabilization and there is a body of data which supports the contention that the phoenix from the ashes is a quiet scenario envisaged by a greater influence than just the FOMC and world CBs.

That's a path most don't wish to explore so they opt instead, to stumble about blindly like the rest of us.


Sunday, October 12, 2008

[gestures] things which can mean the world

Isn't this grand? Isn't it a lovely way to sign off on this Sunday evening? On top of the decision by the courts to allow the gurkhas residency in the UK, the army has written to the residents of Wooton Basset for their support in commemorating the war dead:

In a letter to the town thanking the residents for the gesture, the head of the British Army, Sir Richard Dannatt, said: "I am writing to express my sincere gratitude.

"In many respects, it is the things that cost nothing that are the ones that are the most important - a friendly greeting in the street, a prayer in church... But the gestures shown by the people of Wootton Bassett surpass these at every level."

The things that cost nothing but which mean everything.

Have a lovely night.

[councils] ratepayers want their money back

Look, I know I've already run this about a week ago but am I missing the point here? Why is no one kicking up a fuss about the council money in Icelandic banks?

Why are people just rolling their eyes to the sky and saying, "No way are you getting a bailout," when what they should be doing is going en masse to council offices and asking why the money was not used on:

1. meals on wheels which have been curtailed and tough to the pensioners;
2. extra rubbish collections and insisting the rubbish men come to you to empty the bin, not having to walk half a mile;
3. extra council jobs for a range of workplace sectors?

"Oh, we were making your council tax money work for you." No you weren't - bollocks! You were being clever clever with someone else's money, weren't you?

Now you've lost it and you're liable for every last pound being returned to the ratepayers who paid through the nose for your smartarse actions. You have not used the money on what you were duty bound to do, so just like every other citizen who loses someone's money, you are liable for it.

Oh and by the way, what about this one?

[new feudalism] the nanny state and the new barons


To get back to reality, Debacle commented on the earlier Iceland post:
"Just that it all sounds so extremely dire, like we have a total wipe out on the way."

My reply was, with one addition:
It's the old story of whether you look ahead and see the natural consequences of what is happening now at state, local governmental and societal level. It helps if there are two or three generations to judge by as well. Plus a lot of reading. Plus a centre right or left political stance.

I think the way it is shaping up, it is not so much a matter of living frugally in Britain [in the manner of the Icelander] but becoming increasingly dependent on the Nanny state for what we need, to the point that they can switch it on and off.

This confers power to the central regime and which regime does not wish for this?
The prevailing point of view is that we will pull out of this thing economically and we may well do. However, a lot of societal changes, irreversible ones, will have occurred by then. My eyes are not on the money, which many seem to be focused on but on the societal changes. The noose is inexorably tightening.

There is some support for this point of view. It largely depends whom you read and listen to so I tried to find reasonably rational people who are writing on this, even if one of the publications below is leftist by reputation.

First, a recap of the Common Purpose business here and here, the regionalization which makes the fragmented British regions part of a small sector on the outer rim of Europe, also the citizen jury thing.

Secondly, a Wiki definition of the New Feudalism:

Among the issues claimed to be associated with the idea of neofeudalism in contemporary society are class stratification, globalization, mass immigration/illegal immigration, open borders policies, multinational corporations, and "neo-corporatism."
[The New Feudalism] mimics many of the effects of the old feudalism: an entrenched, fabulously wealthy elite, held in place by low taxes on capital and no taxes on estates; and a large and growing class of uneducated, unskilled labor brought in by unchecked immigration (both legal and illegal), and kept in check by high levels of personal debt, and high taxes on earned income (payroll, income, sales, property, etc.)

Property


Former state Senator John McClaughry, Vermont, an advocate for free enterprise, noted the following at the Second Annual N. Y. Conf. on Private Property Rights (PRFA, 1996):

Today, however, feudalism is coming back in a different guise. A growing body of legal theorists, allied with activist organizations and congenial political leaders, has been working very hard to replace the long-cherished concept of freehold property and land with the old feudal concept of social property. The ancient maxim, sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas, “use your own so as not to injure that of another,” is now held to be insufficient as a maxim for the proper use of land.


In England [the old feudalism] provided, for perhaps three centuries, protection, order, and social stability. It frustrated and discouraged trade, commerce, mobility and individual freedom. By creating a hierarchical economic, military and political order under the king, feudalism invited the abuses associated with centralized power and was, in turn, subject to the disintegrating forces that inevitably undermine centralized systems.


The system was inflexible and in the face of changing circumstances and, of course, technology changes such as the longbow and gun powder which made armed cavalry obsolete, removing the military base that had given rise to the system, feudalism declined.


The story of how [the new feudalism] came about begins probably in the 1930’s but it came to a great fruition in the 1970’s. In the 1970’s we saw legal articles expanding the power of regulation to areas of critical state concern, to wetlands, endangered species, coastlines, and an expansion of the zoning power to limit the actions of individuals.

We saw ingenious new legal doctrines developed, the public trust doctrine, the natural state preservation doctrine and even the idea, never actually litigated, of rights inherent in natural objects, which can be protected by a self-appointed guardian, in the courts.

You have to recognize who the enemy actually are. Organizations like WWF, the NWF and the Sierra club have been pushing, through environmental legislation, for what is ostensibly the rights of wildlife:

The lawyers in the audience will recognize immediately that either of these constitutional amendments would afford tremendous opportunities for creating litigation to stop any person — any landowner, any corporation, any business — from doing virtually anything that could in any way be construed to affect the environment.

Peter Shawn Taylor, in the Financial Post [June 23, 2006], said of the Canadian property situation:

The Ontario government last week announced dramatic new controls over where citizens of Toronto and its satellite cities will be able to live in the next 25 years. It is a deliberate strategy to curb suburban growth and force more people into downtown high-rise apartments -- thus frustrating the hopes and dreams of many young potential homebuyers across Southern Ontario.

There are also strict density targets of up to 400 people or jobs per hectare for urban areas, which appear wildly unrealistic. Building on previous New Feudalism planning tenets such as the Greenbelt legislation that expropriated the development potential of great swaths of farmland and the construction of massive taxpayer-subsidized public transit monuments, Queen's Park will now dictate where residents can live as well.


The steep density targets will also result in living spaces that are far less egalitarian, in keeping with our feudal theme. Australian New Urbanism critic and academic Patrick Troy (who coined the term New Feudalism in 1992) has argued convincingly that putting limits on suburban growth and creating higher-density downtowns will create greater income stratification in housing.

The workplace
and the migrant

David Nicholson-Lord, in the New Statesman [yes, I know], writes of the new workplace:

Since the 1960s work has been dematerialised - turned into a quality rather than a quantity. In the UK, we no longer make things so much as do things - for other people. The rise of the service sector is one of the big stories of the late 20th century. Nine out of every ten new jobs created in the US - and more than 70 per cent of British employment - is in services. In Britain's mid-19th-century manufacturing heyday, by contrast, the figure was less than a third.

Economic power and value, like money itself, is etherealising towards a state of pure information - so services such as IT, education and media are booming. Proliferating regulation, legislation and social complexity produce a proliferation of lawyers, accountants, expert advisers.
Studies by the Institute of Manpower Studies in the 1990s demonstrated the insecurity and inequality of the "new economy" of flexible labour markets, outsourcing, contract working and self-employment.

Self-employment, the institute found, was characterised by extremes of high and low pay, with the better-off over-represented in banking, finance and business, and the poorest in personal and domestic services such as hairdressing and cleaning.
It was not only exacerbating wider social inequality, according to the institute; the economic penalties it carried persisted into old age. And for many "flexibly employed" people, the new economy was not an invigorating world of economic freedom and dynamism - the picture new Labour likes to portray.

[Things formerly unacceptable] ... the soaring prison population, the excesses of executive pay - the world has found it can tolerate them and moved on.
Feminism has brought emancipation for some women - and subjugation for others. For both sexes, the challenge of "having it all" - a plausible theory, a not ignoble ideal - has turned into a series of empty gestures, tasks performed by surrogates in which one's only exertion is the wielding of a credit card.

Here were most of the storylines of the new feudalism: the obsession with appearances, the retinue of retainers, the narcissistic New Age-ism.

Barbara Franz says:

The proposed guest worker program will transform American citizenship from an institution based on civic membership to one based on residence rights and socio-economic status. The United States will create a permanently disadvantaged category of guest workers and further reduce the competitiveness of low-skilled minimum wage American workers.

The concept of immigration has begun to change from an inclusive notion granting equal rights to immigrants and citizens to a more ambivalent model emphasizing obligations and responsibilities of newcomers while withholding social, political, and legal rights.

Down on the farm


Robert Schubert, at Bnet, says:

The privatization of seed is but one part of the steady consolidation of economic power throughout agriculture. Large agro-industrial and retail corporations have now secured toeholds in every phase of the farming cycle: they own seed and seed patents, they control processing facilities, they dominate the retail sector, and they have even moved into financing farmers' operations.

It's as if the barons have arisen from the grave and brought the old feudal system back with them.

The corporations that control poultry and hog farming have already reduced many livestock farmers to contract labor, and grain farmers ... seem headed for the same fate.
Scientific advances in the 1970s and '80s heralded a new era in agriculture. To boost flat sales, Monsanto and other agrichemical companies ventured into genetic engineering and transformed themselves into the biotechnology industry.

They bought out traditional seed companies and engineered their herbicide-resistant genes into the newly acquired seed lines. Although the lower-cost, traditional seed lines simultaneously became less available, to maximize profits the industry needed farmers to buy new seed every year instead of saving it.

David Barboza, in the NYT, says, of the new agricultural thrust:
Many farmers are worried about being squeezed by giant agricultural companies. ''There's a fear this will turn into 14th-century feudalism,'' Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said. ''Those farmers will become serfs. We're not there yet, but it may be coming.''
''The issue for many farmers is not just about the current financial situation and their income,'' said Michael Boehlje, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. ''In the back of their minds, there's a set of concerns about the long term. They want to know how they are going to participate in the new agriculture.''

To wind this up before it becomes any longer than it is, the whole thrust is towards oligopoly where the corporations which survive [the Morgans et al], become the dictators within their diversified fields of monopoly, stronger than the nominal government which is further weakened by moves like the EU and the NAU. These are the new barons.

There are distinct characteristics of the new feudalism, as listed above and the overriding one for us is loss of property rights and bodily sustenance [water and food are dictated by the new barons]. The relatively free middle class now contracts and we return to the serf class, the landed worker [repossessions etc.], the military and the ruling class.

Collapse of the economy, as Debacle mentioned is neither here nor there. If it serves its purpose, it is there. If it is time for recovery in a new social order, that will occur. It's in the hands of the new barons.