Steve Lendman has a nice write-up on market manipulation that shows how they are (still) fleecing the flock, right to the bitter end.

I think anybody that plays that rigged game needs to have their head examined. I also think gold is just as bad, as oft written about here. Hard durable goods and essential consumables are rising in price faster then anything else, but you still need to be careful what you buy.

As a side note — I’m somewhat confounded that we can directly point to the manipulators (and murderers) in our midst, and even document with great accuracy what they’ve done, when they did it and show how they personally benefited at the expense and loss to everyone else, and how they utterly destroyed the lives of countless others. But we seem totally incapable of actually doing anything at all about it except complain.

The confusion is this: what’s it going to take before we drag these rotten sorry-assed bastard down from their pedestals of ill-gotten privilege and power and plant them six feet in the ground?

We know who they are. We know where they live. We know what they’ve done (some of it, anyway). We even know often enough, what they are up to. But even with all this, it doesn’t seem to be enough to incite anyone anywhere to put a stop to it.

All manner of ‘redress of grievances’ has been tried, for many, many years, and nothing has worked. This is why I’ve written about how the system fails us, it’s no longer supportive of truth or justice and jealously protects its own. Of course the system is manipulated by these same thugs, that goes without saying. But the question remains: what exactly is it going to take before they’re feeding the flowers?

This is, after all, what they are greatly afraid of, and what the entire system is designed to prevent, punish, thwart, circumvent and document. This is actually a great tragedy, because it should actually be the exact opposite, the system should never allow these kinds of excesses and abuses to take place for the privileged few (which really means the pillaging few), it should actually support the efforts to make things right again. And it’s more then just a privileged few these days in reality, there are now several million people in America alone, riding on the backs of everyone and everything else, planet-wide.

They control / own / manipulate / manage and abuse the ’system’ to their distinct advantage, and jealously guard their ivory towers, controlling entire armies and markets and the judicial system in the process. Make no mistake, the entire game is rigged from the get-go, it’s not just the markets, it’s everything now, which is why I wonder at the wisdom of those that play the game at all and think they are ‘getting ahead’, and I wonder even more why they’re not all feeding the fishes by now.

Isn’t that what it’s going to take? I mean, seriously now, think about it. We’re all just trying to live our lives and get by, but they keep coming and coming and coming and taking and taking and taking, and manipulating, driving and demanding more and more and more and our corner is getting smaller and smaller and what then? When you dig a little you find out that they’ve been doing this behavior for a long, long time and we know exactly who they are and what they’ve been up to and even what they’re even going to do next, because their lapdog media counterparts tell us so.

And we still do nothing at all. It never ceases to amaze me that you can pick any serious issue and document its cause, its source and the people behind it all, and then, well then nothing. It’s BAU (business as usual) and life as we know it grinds on, diminishing bit by bit, and nobody does anything about it except plead with the system for a little relief but it’s BAU as always.

It’s really amazing. I mean consider — all the things you know, all the evils perpetrated, all the lying, deception, murdering, genocidal and ecocidal actions taking place, and you know that the system is irretrievably broken beyond all possible hope of repair. And yet we stand here still, as dumb, silent sheep, led to the slaughter, again and again and again and again.

I’ll be honest with you — if that is not suicidal and stupid, I don’t know what is. I mean really, why do we take this?

I well know what some arguments would / will be, that we “can’t” and that we “shouldn’t” and that we’d be “punished” and all that claptrap. I reject such notions to be honest because they aren’t even relevant anymore. How could they be? We’re already punished, our world because of their actions (and many of our own), is being dramatically diminished each and every day. How can this NOT be punishment enough? Our future is very precarious as many of us now know, the environmental collapse is so severe that we may not even have much of a future, or any future hardly worth living beyond a few more years. Isn’t that sufficient grounds enough to stop tolerating this bullshit?

I think the real issues that restrict us to inaction aren’t actually moral issues, not anymore. I think that they are really issues of self-preservation. There is nothing immoral about doing the right thing if you must (and believe me, we must), but there is that nagging self-preservation issue that constantly reminds us, “why me”? Why should I involve myself, my life, my future, my freedom, my everything to get involved at the level this dude is talking about?

It’s an honest question. And I think this is the real reason we hesitate. I see no moral issues here in reality, as far as the need to deal with these problems directly. I see the real issue is we are so disconnected from how this really is affecting each and every one of us, that we don’t want to involve ourselves.

You do see some tiny examples of what happens when someone is directly affected by some action or ruling or restriction. Sometimes, they’re angry enough that they just go bezerk and do something drastic. I’m not going to bother detailing any specific examples, because the point that I’m making here is it only becomes meaningful when it happens to you. And then, and generally only then, are you finally at the point where your tolerance level and your willingness to accept this bullshit finally snaps.

If you’re paying attention, there are special efforts being made to make sure that none of us actually reach that level, especially en mass. That would be a riot, a mob, anarchy and unfortunately, as we’ve seen when this does happen, very poorly directed at those who are more then well-deserving of our wrath.

The truth is, we’ve all shown great restraint, incredible amounts in fact. That there isn’t an all out assault against those that have either oppressed us or oppressed others or destroyed the planet is actually quite remarkable. But, there are many factors at work that have all come together to help prevent this from happening.

In so many, many ways, we are seriously kidding ourselves and living with a lot of major delusions. I’ve covered this before, but here is the short list again. We think we have time. We think we need numbers. We think we can vote our way out of this mess. We think “give it one more chance“. We think “it’s not me, therefore it doesn’t matter“. We think “it’s not here, therefore it doesn’t matter“. We think “someone else will fix it“. We think “that what system is for“. We think “I’m too busy“. We think “my life is too important“. We think “maybe later when somebody else gets involved“.

The point is, we think a lot of things, but look carefully. They’re all excuses to not do anything other then the BAU model, which again, if you are looking a paying careful attention to, simply doesn’t work anymore. What we’re really saying is, my self-preservation is paramount, and perhaps it is. Nothing wrong with that, but because we are thinking within the BAU model itself, we fail to realize that we aren’t anywhere near as disconnected as we’ve been led to believe. We are all part of this web of life, this community of citizens, sentient and non-sentient, and the only ones capable of action is us.

But aren’t we also living with the delusion that basically says, “one day, I’ll take action” when our intolerance level finally snaps. Maybe you will, but probably you won’t (or it would have happened already), because your self-preservation continues to be paramount. Or you are one of those that absolutely refuses to take any action outside of yourself.

In either case, it is what we don’t do that is handed down to someone else (probably your kids). And this is really what I think is important to consider. This generation has basically said on a very widely accepted level, we’re not going to do anything. A lot of effort within the system has been attempted, but it’s not helping much. And it can’t, because the system is no longer capable of fixing itself.

Over on the Island of Doubt, in regards to the posturing going on with the Waxman-Markey climate bill, the author writes:

“Climate change is a global phenomenon that threatens the very habitability of the planet. Waiting until we’ve passed one or more thresholds beyond which mitigation is no longer an option is not a sane decision. Yes, Markey-Waxman is flawed. As currently drafted the chances it will accomplish what needs to be done is next to zero.”

This was the U.S. “best effort” so far on climate change response. And it was pitiful, amounting to next to nothing and BAU for industry (musical chairs). My own commentary posted there on this article is as follows:

It’s pretty obvious that it isn’t going to work (at all). Think about it. It was this difficult to get this much (next to nothing) and it took this long.

This will create the view that we’ve done enough, at least for now, when the data shows that we do not have any more time left to delay serious reductions. But the political will power will have been spent and so will public interest. We’ve seen this before, many, many times.

Then, when we get hit with REALLY scary data and effects and it FINALLY wakes a few more people up to our predicament, it’ll already be too late, even if we somehow got more political interest at that time.

This isn’t something we can do AFTER, as many claim, after is too friggin late. This was something we had to do before, which is definitely not something our political plantation owners were inclined to do (ever).

Basically, the Waxman bill has killed us all, pure and simple. Those that endorsed it and those that settled for it fired the bullet from the gun and it’s traveling right towards it’s target unimpeded.

Basically, the BAU approach will kill us all, there is no doubt about it. To put it more clearly, it will kill your children deader then a doornail. What we don’t do today is quite literally going to kill them all. We are condemning ALL future generations of humans and even all non-human species to death. And why is this? Because we continue to stand around with our thumbs up our asses and debate the justification to rise up and put a stop to all of this.

Am I the only one that realizes this? That’s a rhetorical question of course and it’s not even true. But our attitude is that we are not responsible and that we have nothing to gain, while also totally failing to realize we actually have everything to lose by our silent acquiesence to planetary genocide. We are going to lose everything, you do know that, right? We don’t even have a future anymore and it is directly related to our near-total lack of response. All we have left now (already) is the dregs of the world’s resources that we are fast consuming, while we commit ecocide on a planetary scale and the environment becomes so uninhabitable that we’ll all be migrating north.

Everybody has seen pictures of Iraq. That godforsaken land was once so covered with trees that the sun never touched the ground. The same goes for many other parts of the world, including Lebanon and Spain. But what happened? We consumed it all, tree by tree and by so doing, we changed the face of the world. It’s still happening in the Amazon and Haiti, where we just keep on going with the BAU model until we have consumed it all. And we’ve changed our climate and our future survival as a result.

Nothing is stopping this, because we ourselves won’t stop and we won’t involve ourselves beyond the measures that clearly don’t work. So we pass this gigantic problem on to the next generation until it all finally collapses. What a terrifying legacy we’ve left. What kind of people are we?

I definitely advocate leaving the system and letting it collapse. It’s my hope that when this happens it’ll sweep some of these planetary parasites away. But I’m also pragmatic, a lot of them will still be with us, parasites have a way of doing that. So what can you do about it? It’s a question.

A lot of people think that collapse will be sufficient to close this chapter of greed and consumption, but history reveals that this will not happen. It will help, but it will not stop the genocide. You can see the evidence throughout history as human migration occurs from one devestated and devoured area, stripped of its resources is abandoned for another. And we’re already doing this again. Economists, scientist, politicians and industry are migrating all over the world with their armies of ‘extraction specialist’ (a term I’m loosely applying here, because it’s really many of you) into the far north, deeper into the oceans and jungles, farther into the forest, and into less plundered lands and remote spots of the Earth. And as long as there are energy supplies to permit this process, it’ll continue.

Let’s just be honest here. We’re still a long ways away from exhausting all sources of resources used by humans, in part because we are so omnivorous and creative on what we can use. We’ll even start farming jellyfish in the oceans if that’s what it takes, never mind that the salmon are now dead and gone. Algae is being considered for both an energy source (biofuel) and food source to feed our teeming billions. It is clear already that we will willingly consume every living thing on the planet.

Given opportunity and a habitable climate, we would achieve billions more consumers on this planet, devouring and polluting absolutely everything in the process. But collapse will probably slow this down somewhat, but it won’t stop it, because we’ll still be focused on unsustainable methodologies of existence and consumption.

We are a long, long ways from the day of living off of the local resources, and living on the increase of the Earth instead of the decrease. We need a solar economy and a solar standard of living that takes its sustenance, energy and life from the Earth’s increase exclusively from solar energy put out by the Sun. This is the only truly sustainable existence there is. But in just a hundred years, we’ve consumed at least a million years of solar energy stored up in the form of hydrocarbons. This is absolutely insane.

We cannot let this happen. We already know it won’t happen when the easily gotten energy supplies run out. Believe me, we can be thankful for this fact, as it will finally slow down our rapacious appetite. But we are definitely not there yet. I can easily envision that dwindling energy supplies will be used in some pretty horrific ways to help prop up this tottering civilization. More war of course, and oppression for the masses, but also for further resource extraction. We’ve already found ways to make coal into fuel, a very pollutive process that will enable us to keep grinding away at the world.

There is indeed an ‘end to all of this’ by just doing nothing and let it eventually run out of steam and collapse. Once all the resources are plucked and picked and dug up, and all the waterways and air is polluted and destroyed, and the billions fall into starvation for lack of food, fertilizers, transportation energy, topsoil and habitable climate, it’ll come to an end. And of course, this is exactly where we are headed, full-tilt. But why in god’s name would we ever allow such a thing? If we wait that long, it is a virtual certainty that there will be nothing left.

We are the only ones who can stop this. It is our civilization, after all, nobody ‘else’ is responsible.

Leaving the system is a start, but please don’t think that this is enough. Not enough of you are going to leave to make any impact at all. Too few are willing. Too many remain enamored with the trinkets of civilization, exchanging beads and (poor quality) bread for their temporary, ‘comfortable’ existence at the expense of the rest of the planet. It’s time to wake up and realize what this is really going to cost us and what it’s really costing the rest of life on Earth.

Nobody has a ‘right’ to cut down a forest and destroy the habitat and the lives within it. Nobody has a right to pave a wetland or divert a stream. Nobody has a right to chop down the natural habitat in a jungle and plant a monoculture of palm oil trees so we can drive our cars to the 7/11 store thousands of miles away. Nobody has a right to remove a mountain top and dig up the coal and pollute the rivers and streams for generations. These things do not belong to anybody, but they are shared by all generations (human and non-human), past, present and future.

All we have is the ‘right’ to take what we need and nothing more. But we do not have the right to take so much and destroy so wickedly and to oppress so many and in so doing, change the very survival of the entire planet and all of its lifeforms. This is not our right and never was, but we are the only species on the planet that seems to totally fail to understand this simple fact.

Why are we still debating this issue? Why are we still sitting around? Why are we unwilling to do what needs to be done?

Forget ‘consensus’, you don’t need it. Forget reforming the system, it doesn’t work and always seeks to preserve itself. In fact, forget most of what you know, because our lives are products of this insane culture and irresponsible civilization and we have been conditioned since birth to accept it all. How can we know what to do when we are the problem?

We can stop. It is a choice. It is the only choice there is. Our refusal of this choice is what condemns us. Our pretense that we are ‘changing’ when clearly we are not is what convicts us. Ahead awaits the gallows of our indecision and refusal and indifference. To everyone, I plead: choose wisely.

Apparently, some of you are having trouble viewing the blog. The End of Days post contained a couple of music files, which you had to click on to listen to.

I’ve removed these music links (they worked and displayed fine for me), but during testing with Microsucks Internet Explorer version 6.0, the blog’s right hand column display was entirely missing.

Missing under (using IE6) are the calender, website links, best of blog, blog story, collapse survival, blog comments, etc. In fact, so much is missing that it’s obvious IE6 is absolutely useless. So if you’re using IE6, about half the blog doesn’t display.

Oh, the Youtube videos won’t load either apparently under IE6. All I can see is the message, “An error has occurred, please try again later”.

I won’t load another Internet Explorer crapware on my system for testing, so I can’t tell you what other and more current versions of IE are doing, you’d have to tell me what you can’t see (now if that isn’t a conundrum, I don’t know what is).

I use Mozilla (Firefox) and everything displays correctly for me.

There should be 3 columns on the display, the left column contains categories, search, archives, the center column is the blog contents and (presently) shows several YouTube video blog entries, the right column shows calender, website links, best of blog, blog story, blog truth, classified ads, collapse blog, collapse blog, collapse survival, resources, support this site, and the last 12 or so blog comments.

Non-registered users can send comments about this to admin at survivalacres.com

Submitted by Torjus — a new YouTube video of the evidence against the official “story” (lies) of the U.S. Government and the collapse / attack of the World Trade Center.

If you’re not familiar with the evidence against the official story, you should take a few moments and watch this.

The video is informative, but well known data. This country will never allow a proper investigation into the homegrown attacks on the WTC.

I’d bet 50% or so of Americans already know that our own government blew up the WTC. And it has not made a lick of difference, and in my opinion, it never will. This was the crime of century and these bastards got away with it.

By the way — there WAS reports of unusual activity on entire floors of the WTC, with many people coming and going (workers) and entire floors blocked off from regular access. This happened only a couple of weeks before the attack.

There is absolutely no doubt at all that the Bush / Cheney cabal did this. But look what’s happened to them. Exactly nothing, while they went forth and blew up the rest of the world with their lying bloodlust and turned this country into a police state.

Makes me sick. I am so ashamed of this country that I could puke.

Sent in by Lonewolf - for some reason, the U.S. Army has moved to DEFCON 2. This is only 1 step below maximum readiness for imminent attack / war.

I will withhold any speculation as to why (and it doesn’t matter what I think anyway).  But if these idiots go to war with North Korea, then it’s just another peg in the cribbage board.

We live in interesting times. Ours is an age of greed, corruption, evil and staggering levels of indifference and denial of knowledge.

Depending on where and when you were born, you are born into a life of privilege or poverty. For the privileged, yours was a life of excess, consumption, competition, and even more privilege for the ’successful’.

For the impoverished, lives of hardscrabble desperation, back breaking labor, exploitation, death.

The difference between the two is mind-boggling, but you’d have to be paying attention to notice.

Ancient philosophers, writers and artists have all predicted that we would destroy ourselves. The tragedy isn’t only that they were right — the tragedy is that they could correctly identify these events even then, which tells you something about their world and their time.

We haven’t changed one bit, what you see is just window dressing on the same bordello that’s always been here. Inside, the same made-up prostitutes, drawn curtains, smoky rooms, money exchange for what is the oldest business on the planet.

Whoredom isn’t unique to the sex trade, it’s found throughout civilization. We exchange life, liberty, future, health and untold generations of future survival for mere coins, stupidly believing that we’ll only do this once more and then somehow we’ll clean up our lives and finally get it together.

But of course, we never do, which is why the bordello is still here and why we’re still a part of it. It doesn’t matter if your just the janitor and you attend church on Sunday, and you never ever touch any of the girls, you’re still a part of it.

For the past couple of years, I have written about the collapse of our world, covering subjects such as corruption, politics, tyranny, war, environmental collapse, and global climate change. These are all signposts of the same prostitution ring, run by corporate fat cats and a greedy public eager to partake in their wares and deprivation of the soul. A great deal of money has been exchanged but the people are still not satiated, and the corporate world is all too happy to keep changing the sheets.

Have any of you found what you are looking for?

——————

From Lonewolf: Self-fulfilling Extermination

GIVEN reality finite (limited) resources, a destroyed planetary ecology, and human population (with individually and collectively exploitative) overshoot.

Humanity has a (very brief if not belated) choice between –
A) immediate voluntary ‘reduction’ (of/in everything starting with personal/societal expectations) or;

B) of a mandatory extermination (aka dieoff).

IMO (TMK) , Americant’s (be they ‘light-green’ Obamaniac’s or ‘dark-red’ Neocon-devils) have obviously, deliberately chosen the later path. Assured Mutual Destruction happened (note past tense).

If (read “when”) access to ‘our’ (US) foreign oil inputs are foreclosed on (shut off indefinitely), I’d wager that at least 25% of US/you would be dead within weeks to months at the outside, with probably far more than 75% dead (or enslaved) within a year, and 95% gone within two years. All will wish that they too were never born.

Domestic US energy sources would barely ‘power’ the military/LEO machine (for awhile). 99+% would be totally panicked into utter insanity within mere days - if not hours. Water wouldn’t last a week (for a vast majority). Food (shopping for) wouldn’t last even that long with ‘transport’ interrupted (halted or ad hoc). Communications (cellphones. internet, etc) grind to a complete halt - if not immediately vanish (except for military, while that may endure)

Job? What FKN job? Staying alive (ntm sane) while the world around you implodes into utter chaos is a full-time (and futile) job. Without oil on all it’s myriad manifestations flowing to you (US) continuously, there is NO worth, NO value, NO purpose, NO knowing, NO health, NO security, ‘civilization’ … aka NO future (you’ll want). PERIOD.

Life? What FKN life? Only chaos, misery, regret, pain and the stench of rotting corpses (mass death) and inevitable extinction. Global thermonuclear war is starting to look better and better (if the only concern was for human suffering) by comparison. Either way, bye-bye bipeds and good FKN riddance.

——————
Pessimistic? Or realist? I can identify a thousand points of diminishing light that once darkened into dust, reveal a future of terrifying proportions. But we’re still playing the ‘game’. The chairs have shifted, but the same music plays on and on and on. Endlessly leading us in one inexorable direction.

I am no longer writing America’s obituary. I’m writing the worlds. Planet Earth. Our only home. Many of us are, but it’s still not getting through.

The Government takes a 72.5% share in General Motors (nationalization continues). The Republican right cries foul and unfair treatment of Chrysler dealerships. There’s more grandstanding activity on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but little real action. Government greed with a national sales tax is picking up steam. 73% of the oceans zooplankton is GONE (this will lead to total collapse of the oceans). Carbon emissions are expected to rise 40%, while the permafrost melts release methane (even worse then C02) into the atmosphere.

From ThoughtsOnline:

The federal government is going to receive a 70% stake in General Motors in return for ‘investing’ another $50 billion (note: the Washington Post reports the additional ‘investment’ is only $29 billion).

Using the lower number, and ignoring the $19 billion the federal government has already loaned GM (treating it as a a sunk cost), and ignoring the equity being given to the UAW in return for whatever paltry concessions they are making, getting 70% for $29 billion puts an enterprise value on GM of almost $42 billion.

And who in their right mind would pay $42 billion for GM?

Using a Price/Earnings ratio of 14-to-1 (there are companies with higher multiples and companies with lower multiples, but 14-to-1 makes the math easy), GM would need to have profits of roughly $3 billion.

So how does GM close the gap between the tens of billions of dollars they’re losing and the $3 billion in profits needed to even come close to remotely justifying the government’s ‘investment’?

I have no idea. The ‘concessions’ the UAW is making come nowhere near closing the gap. And I haven’t even factored in GM being pressured to produce even more small (money-losing) cars and fewer (money-making) SUVs, a move that will make environmentalists happy but will do no good to GM’s finances.

So back to my question, who in their right mind would value GM at $42 billion? The answer: nobody with a shred of business sense. Nobody who thought it necessary to see a return on investment. Nobody who was using their own money.

In other words, only a politician who mistakes their success at extracting campaign contributions for business acumen. Only a politician who ignores the immorality of taking so much money from one group of people in order to dole it out to favored friends.

I’ve long respected the work over at Thomas Paine’s Corner, which champions the cause of animal liberation and the horrible realities of vivisection.

But this “health revolution” is sure to piss some of these people off (including me) — Creation of ‘GM’ monkey heralds health revolution

Researchers have developed a technique to create genetically modified monkeys that suffer from human illnesses.

Experimenting on these monkeys, they believe, will advance our understanding and treatment of incurable conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. However, the scientific breakthrough has caused consternation among groups opposed to animal experiments because the development will almost certainly lead to a sudden increase in the number of primates used in medical research at a time when there are calls for fewer monkeys to be used in experiments.

The development also raises the prospect that we will be able to apply the technique to humans – another primate. This could help families affected by inherited disorders such Huntington’s disease and cystic fibrosis by permenantly eradicating their defective genes from future generations.

More here (I’d just hit “submit” and Lonewolf sent me this): Green-glowing monkeys have green-glowing babies

By now, you should well realize that when science and technology and medicine “promise” to deliver, they often don’t. And if they do deliver, it always, always comes at a very high price, often one which we do not discover for many years their terrifying side effect.

Anybody remember Freon? This is one of thousands of examples of how a new ‘wonder’ is developed with the promise to save us all, but then we discover we did something even worse …

This one is not hard at all to see as being morally wrong. Vivisectionist today are a terrible groups of butchers who do all kinds of horrible and nasty things to caged animals. Not much different then your modern factory farm, but I digress.

The so-called ‘promise’ in this article isn’t fact, it’s speculation at this point. Scientists are ’saving’ us, once again.

But never mind that. This is not the way to go about developing human cures for human diseases.

Filed under Environment, Terrorism and Tyranny because that’s exactly what this is. You don’t need to be a human to be terrorized.

Sent in by Lonewolf, a Truthout story on drilling for natural gas, another so-called “clean energy” lie, and how this is completely destroying our watersheds, wildlife and habitats. Clean Energy And Poisoned Water

Anybody got any of this activity going on in their area?

You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result. - Mahatma Gandhi

Check out txsharon on drilling reform, there is a picture presentation on the left side of the blog, and a bunch of YouTube videos here on environmental destruction.

Drudge and many other idiotic sites, are warning about North Korea nukes (ignore this, as it’s all bullshit). Obama endorses indefinite detention for anybody for any reason (pay attention).  The Supreme Court pick is a hispanic women. China is caught in the same death spiral as the US dollar. Everybody knew that Iraq was a religious war. Huge sectors of our economy are still in free-fall. More banks fail.  The main stream media continues to lie about everything, including all of the above.

Collapse is still well underway, nothing will stop this. You’d better get ready as fast as you possibly can. 2009 will be a pivotal year on many fronts affecting you personally. Whatever you’re going to do, do it now.