This following quote by Bourbon Democrat (very conservative) President Grover Cleveland is often truncated by right wingers:

"Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government;

Right here is where they stop. The thought from Grover's 1888 message to Congress continues.


but the Communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is no less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of misrule."

Halloween 2011 Murders from here and there. 

"Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue." - Seneca

I have limited myself to selected murders that occurred on Halloween itself. If I include mayhem that happened at Halloween parties from the past week I would have to write a book.

Taylor Van Diest

Eighteen year old Taylor Van Diest of Pleasant Valley Secondary in British Columbia was found murdered near a railroad track according to The Province. "She loved horror movies. Halloween was her favourite holiday," said her cousin Erica.

Dawson

In Manteca, California a 26 year old man, Dawson McGehee, was arrested for allegedly murdering his Mommy Monday night. After the murder he was quoted by a neighbor, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."

Violence documented by nola.com

One of my favorite places, The City of New Orleans celebrated the holiday in style. At least 16 people were shot and two were killed during the festivities on Halloween in this colorful town. The highlight was a gunfight on tourist-packed Bourbon street. Spectators were both horrified (the seven wounded) and entertained (the rest). Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the violence was "unnatural" but I would disagree. Angola State Prison up the road hosts over 5000 convicted murderers, of which a good portion hail from the Crescent City. The traditional and mandatory hand-wringing resumes. But I say, "Laissez les bontemps rouler!" because New Orleans is back to normal after Katrina. 

Curtis and Kasey

In Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, Curtis Wayne Edwards, 43, and Kasey O'Neal Tanner, 23 decided to 

"trick"  Joshua Luke Green, 23, at a Halloween costume party at the local VFW post. They stabbed him and he died on the way to the hospital. Both Curtis and Kasey have felony convictions on their curriculum vitae.

Ardavaz and Dorothy Delir with a photograph of their son. 

Down Under in Sydney, Australia, Eden Delir, 17 was bashed to death by two lads, 16, at a Halloween party after they were asked to leave by the deceased. The murder weapons were a bottle and a metal pole. 

I am bending the rules because there was no murder in this case but a little extra Halloween violence and attempted murder might be of interest. According to the Wilke's Journal Patriot, John Wayne Martin, 59, was spending a quiet Halloween evening in his mobile home in the Austin community of Wilke's county North Carolina when he answered a knock on the door. Two masked men cried "Trick or Treat!" then knocked him down, knocked him out, ransacked his trailer and poured accelerant everywhere.When John woke up his home was on fire and he was too. Martin is in the burn unit of Baptist Hospital. The unknown assailants got to both trick and be treated. 

"He who bears the brand of Cain shall rule the Earth." - George Bernard Shaw

Isle Of Shoals Steamship Company's Thomas Laighton
John Bonanno photo 2003

Augustus Saint-Gaudens,
Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, The Garden of Pan
John Bonanno Photo 2003

Is this Pan? Or, has St. Gaudens has given us a dour and flinty New Englander dressed up to model Pan?
I believe with all my heart it is the latter, for no Greek God Pan could appear so unhappily serious playing the reeds of transformed Syrinx. Is he piping a march to war or a seductive song?


"He lived in Arcadia, where he guarded flocks, herds, and beehives, took part in the revels of the mountain-nymphs, and helped hunters to find their quarry. He was, on the whole, easy-going and lazy, loving nothing better than his afternoon sleep, and revenged himself on those who disturbed him with a sudden loud shout from a grove, or grotto, which made the hair bristle on their heads. Yet the Arcadians paid him so little respect that, if ever they returned empty-handed after a long day’s hunting, they dared scourge him with squills."


"The Olympian gods, while despising Pan for his simplicity and love of riot, exploited his powers. Apollo wheedled die art of prophecy from him, and Hermes copied a pipe which he had let fall, claimed it as his own invention, and sold it to Apollo."



"Pan, whose name is usually derived from paein, ‘to pasture’, stands for the ‘devil’, or ‘upright man’, of the Arcadian fertility cult, which closely resembled the witch cult of North-western Europe. This man, dressed in a goat-skin, was the chosen lover of the Maenads during their drunken orgies on the high mountains, and sooner or later paid for his privilege with death."

Robert Graves The Greek Myths

Books I Have Enjoyed
A Walk Down Memory Lane


Finding a few spare moments yesterday I decided to pour through some boxes of books down in the basement. It is always enjoyable to visit old friends. These were some of them.

Art by Gino D'Achille

 ERB's Mars and Venus books are especially enjoyable reads for boys (and girls too, my ex-wife was very fond of them) who would just love to get away from our humdrum world; but grown up kids love them too. I didn't care for the Tarzan books as much but I must admit I didn't read so many of them.  Disney is making a new John Carter movie. I can't wait. A John Carter movie (Princess of Mars starring Antonio Sabato Jr. and Tracy Lords, available on Netflix streaming now) was released a couple of years ago and it was execrable, but I liked it anyway.

Art by Frank Frazetta

 Conan the Barbarian was my favorite fictional character for years. He was the wish fulfillment of the skinny introverted kid that I was. The Conan original movie was OK with a few brilliant moments, but Arnold was the barbarian's perfect embodiment. I haven't seen the new movie yet. Conan The Conqueror is the only novel length Conan story written by Howard. I recommend all of Howard's work but the Conan stories are the best. Amazon has a fine Kindle Collection, The Robert E. Howard Omnibus: 99 Collected Stories for $1.99, and well worth the price.

Was Carlos Castaneda writing ethnology or fiction or an admixture of both? It doesn't matter. They are wonderful books full of truth.

Art by John Schoenherr

Frank Herbert was a spook. Therefore there is much to be learned from his work. Dune is a classic. If you just saw the movie you may think the book is a mess. It is not. The film is a beautiful pastiche of scenes from the book. Read the book and the movie will become comprehensible. The two television miniseries are very good.

 Anderson's book is what a critic might call a fun romp. Arthurian knights take over an alien space ship and wreak havoc in the galaxy. I read this book fifty years ago at least. I should re-read because I hardly remember it except for the fact that it was a gas.

Art by Ed Emshwiller

Dick Dick Dick. You can't get enough. My first was The Man In The High Castle in '62 when I was 12. I collected PKD until he expired and stopped writing. It's all good. Talk about subversion of reality.

This is probably Silverberg's best. Another evocative book worthy of a re-read.

 I loved Ray Bradbury when I was very young. His short stories could be very poetic in an obvious way. I never was much of a fan of Fahrenheit 451. Orwell did dystopia much better. Mr. Bradbury has become conservative in his old age and I wonder why. But the answer is probably the same old story: success and prosperity.

Art by Richard Powers

Judith Merril's annual collections were mandatory reading for me. This is the second annual. She was criticized for stretching the definition of what was science fiction and sometimes I thought better stories could have been selected than some of the out of genre pieces by non science fiction writers that she published. But that is a quibble. 

Two Cancer Studies Find Bacterial Clue in Colon --The New York Times

Go to the  link in the headline to read the story. Whether this bug causes cancer or not, it is sobering to contemplate the means by which Fusobacterium, which is normally a denizen of the mouth, finds its way into the colon.

A Child Frolics in a Cancerous Colon. Found at the Kelly Laferty blog. 

Ferdinand Lundberg, April 30, 1905 - March 1, 1995

The Rich Are Different

I've been rereading parts of Ferdinand Lundberg's fantastic look at the real rulers of America, The Rich And The Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today, published by Lyle Stuart in 1968. You can read my short review of this book at the Amazon link above. The book is out of print but reasonably priced used copies are available there.

Mr. Lundberg's insights on America were acute and prescient. The culture of the wealthy he describes in TRATSR has gotten more extreme. The rich are richer. They have more power. They are more bold and less cautious. But they are still primarily the same old families that have been there from the beginning. And that is the point of the book. A small number of families retain wealth and power using their wealth and power to undermine our democratic republic. Mr. Lundberg graduated from Columbia University and was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal during the stock market crash of 1929 heralding the Great Depression. His books include Imperial Hearst (1936), America's Sixty Families (1940), and The Rockefeller Syndrome (1968). Lyle Stuart also published Cracks In The Constitution in 1982 which makes the argument that our founding document is a fraud. The first sentence "We the people.." is the first lie in it since it was actually written by wealthy propertied gentlemen who never intended that the people in general would have much to do with their great enterprise.

Tonight at 8PM on Adam Gorightly's Untamed Dimensions Vyzigoth, Gordon Comstock and myself will discuss this great book.

Some Lundberg quotes from (just the beginning of) the book:

Most Americans—citizens of the wealthiest, most powerful and most ideal-swathed country in the world—by a very wide margin own nothing more than their household goods, a few glittering gadgets such as automobiles and television sets (usually purchased on the installment plan, many at second hand) and the clothes on their backs.


Their agents deafen a baffled world with a never ceasing chant about the occult merits of private-property ownership (good for everything that ails man and thoroughly familiar to the rest of the world, not invented in the United States), and the vaulting puissance of the American owners. It would be difficult in the 1960’s for a large majority of Americans to show fewer significant possessions if the country had long labored under a grasping dictatorship. How has this process been contrived of stripping threadbare most of the populace, which once at least owned small patches of virgin land? To this fascinating if off-color question we shall give some attention later. Statements such as the foregoing on the rare occasions when they are ventured (although strictly true and by no means new)1 are bound to be challenged by the alert propaganda watchdogs of the established order. These propagandists, when hard pressed, offer an incantation about a mythical high American standard of living which on inspection turns out to be no more than a standard of gross consumption. The statements must, therefore—particularly in this age of burgeoning one-sided affluence-be monumentally and precisely documented and re-documented. Not that this will deter the watchdogs, who have limitless resources of casuistry and dialectic to fall back upon as well as an endless supply of white paper from denuded forests.

Compared with the political power and influence of the American military today, Hohenzollern Germany (at one time designated by horrified American publicists as the acme of cold militarism in modern times) was only a one-cylinder, comic-opera affair. The Pentagon of today—its agents busy in Congress and the Executive Branch, with the politicians obviously standing in awe of the be-medaled generals, with the defense-industry corporations loaded with retired officers—could flatten an entity like Hohenzollern or Hitler Germany with a few well placed blows.

The United States is a great deal more like Brazil and Argentina, for example, than it is like France or England (two countries upon which most Americans are inclined to look with patronizing reservation). Even in such a distinctive United States feature as the separation of church and state there is now a strong movement, led by politicians with their eyes on the least instructed voters, for a direct supportive involvement of the state in the affairs of the church, an involvement that would presumably gain these politicians the support of the church. In this feature, then, there is a movement to make the United States even more like Latin America and less like Europe, where church and state are tending to become more and more separate in most jurisdictions. It might almost be said that there is a growing tendency to model the United States, apart from its industrial features, upon the “banana republics,” thus making it the Banana Republic par excellence

Down through history poverty has always referred to lack of property. The man who had no property was defined as poor; the more property a man owned the less poor he was. Most people in the United States own little more property than do Russian peasants, and by that standard they are poor.


For my part, I would say that anyone who does not own a fairly substantial amount of income-producing property or does not receive an earned income sufficiently large to make substantial regular savings or does not hold a well-paid securely tenured job is poor. He may be healthy, handsome and a delight to his friends—but he is poor.

But this panorama of contemporary private wealth and power throws some doubt on the doctrines of earlier apologists for the big fortunes. It was once widely preached from pulpits as well as editorial pages that great wealth was either the reward for social service (such as graciously building a vast industry to cater to an undeserving public) or it represented the inevitable, natural and wholly acceptable outcome of an evolutionary struggle in which the fittest survived and the unfit landed in the gutter. On the basis of this doctrine the present top wealthholders are the offspring of public benefactors and the fittest of a past generation. Fortunately, they are not themselves facing the same tests of fitness.


What has developed, then, under the operation of inheritance laws handed down from days when property ownership was far more modest to a day when vast properties have been created mainly by technology, is a huge, solid fortress of interlaced wealth against which even clever new wealthseekers, try as they will, cannot make a tiny dent. About the only way one can get in (and that way isn’t always rewarding) is by marriage. If a potential new Henry Ford produces an invention and sets out with friends to market it he generally finds (as did Professor Edwin H. Armstrong, inventor of wide-swing radio frequency modulation, the regenerative circuit for vacuum tubes, ultra short-wave super-regeneration and the superheterodyne circuit) that it is boldly infringed by established companies. After he spends the better part of a lifetime in court straining to protect his rights he may win (usually he does not); but if he wins he collects only a percentage royalty. What the infringers can show they have earned through their promotional efforts they may keep, with the blessings of the courts, who are sticklers for equity: All effort must be rewarded. And then the overwrought inventor, as Professor Armstrong did in 1954, can commit suicide. Henry Ford came up when there were only small competing companies in the field. When established companies are  in the field, inventors must sell out, or suffer a fate similar to Professor Armstrong’s.



The wealthy, like everyone else, dislike to pay taxes and, unlike most other people, they know how to minimize them through the exercise of political influence. This is one of the nice differences between being wealthy and being poor. The Constitution of the United States bars the bestowal of titles of nobility. But in many ways it would clear up much that is now obscure if titles were allowed. Not only would they show, automatically, to whom deference was due as a right but they would publicly distinguish those who held continuing hereditary power from people who are merely temporarily voted in or appointed for limited terms.



In order to participate in politics in the Soviet Union one must be a member of the Communist Party. This is a formal condition. Similarly, in order to participate meanirtgfully in politics in the United States one must be a property owner. This is not a formal requirement; formally anyone may participate. But, informally, participation beyond voting for alternate preselected candidates is so difficult for the nonpropertied as to be, in effect, impossible. The nonpropertied person in the United States who wishes to attain and hold a position of leverage in politics must quickly become a property owner. And this is one reason why unendowed budding American politicians, not being property owners, must find or create opportunities (legal or illegal) for themselves to acquire property. Without it they are naked to the first wind of partisan adversity and gratuitous public spitefulness.




A Few More Pertinent Quotes:

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. 
Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
 James 5, 1-5



Thus shelter'd, free from care and strife,
May I enjoy a calm through life ;
See faction, safe in low degree.
As men at land see storms at sea.
And laugh at miserable elves.
Not kind, so much as to themselves,
Curs'd With such souls of base alloy. 

As can possess, but not enjoy;
Debarred the pleasure to impart
By av'rice, sphincter of the heart;
- Matthew Green 1696-1737 English poet, from "The Spleen"

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread. 
Francis Bacon from the essay Of Seditions and Troubles

The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God's ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things. 
-Norman O. Brown, September 25, 1913– October 2, 2002,
US philosopher, from Life Against Death, ch. 15

Avarice, ambition, lust, etc., are nothing but species of madness, although not enumerated among diseases.
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

My Water Garden, the first year...

Why Cable News Is Bad


They Do Not Cover Real News 
Unless You Call Murder Trials, Celebrity Bad Behavior, and Political Fantasy as "News"


The cable news networks have found out it is a lot cheaper to hire talking heads who blather about politics than real newsmen in the field who report on real events.

Let us not even mention the expense of hiring investigative news teams which may or may not pay off with a good story which will only piss off their sources, purchasers of advertising time, and owners in the politico-business community anyway. There is no upside to that.

But here is upside. There is a lot more bang for the buck, so to speak,  for television news executives to hire long legged babe newsreaders to prance around the office looking good. 

The simultaneous strength and the weakness of democracy is that it is designed so that ascendant temporarily popular interests, including those which are dangerous to society, may take over the government. These more aggressive and rapacious movements are hungrier for control than the benign ones, and therefore are more often successful.

Mitt Romney speaks from the Des Moines Register's "Soapbox" at the Iowa State Fair August 11, 2011 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) from the LA Times

LET'S HEAR IT FOR LIMITED LIABILITY!

‎"Corporations are people, my friend... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings my friend."  

So said Mitt Romney, quoted by the Huffington Post at the Iowa State Fair yesterday, denigrating and insulting good people everywhere when he was asked why he is attacking "entitlements" rather than looking to fairly tax and eliminate loopholes for corporations. At the same time he conjured the concept of "The People" as expounded in the Declaration of Independence, intentionally confounding this noble concept with his rich friends and cronies who actually are invested in the big corporations.

Be wary of the man who addresses you as "my friend."

What kind of "people" are corporations?

Big corporations act like people who are thousands of times more powerful than any real human being, and are totally immoral because their only interest, by law, is to make a profit by any means necessary.

A corporation is an atheist, dreamless, sleepless predator. 

It acts like a human possessed by a ferocious selfish demon.

Corporations enable small men to indulge their basest instincts with invulnerability. 

What  nice "people" are corporations!

They are conspiracies, exclusive socialist creations of the plutocrats, to mass and aggrandize their ill-gotten mostly inherited wealth.
These fictions chartered by government and protected by law have all the rights and few of the responsibilities of a human being.
They facilitate cooperation among the fortunate wealthy against the lesser human beings who toil for a living.
In a true capitalist system the rich and powerful would have to compete with each other. 
The corporations allow natural enemies to easily join forces against the people. 

They cannot die because they do not truly live. 

They cannot be jailed for their crimes.

The owners of the corporations are protected from responsibility for the wicked deeds committed by these entities which act on behalf of the power of their riches.

Supreme Court "justices" in the possession of the wealthy declared these insane entities "people" with all the rights and none of the responsibilies of real "people" during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant.

American freedom has been disappearing ever since.

Thus the wealthy corrupt the power of government to aggrandize themselves while successfully convincing the people that the government, their only means of peaceful remedy against the depradations of the rich, is the source of their suffering, rather than a tool for its respite. 

The Archon, Devil Radiation, Assaults an Innocent

"I am he who received revelation from the Pleroma of Imperishability…
he who stripped himself and went about naked…."
From The (Second) Apocalypse of James



Fukushima!


It hasn't gone away.


It's still bad and getting worse.


TEPCO announced today that their Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility was experiencing record high  radiation levels. 
Reading of 10 sieverts an hour have been recorded in a ventilation duct at plants 1 and 2. Such a level of radiation is lethal after only an hour's exposure. 
This is double June's previous high readings at the site since the earthquake and subsequent tsunami triggered meltdowns at the inadequately designed and fortified reactor complex.
This is bad news for the workers trying to batten down the site.

Peter Burns, former chief executive officer of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, says given the scale of the Fukushima emergency, the high reading is to be expected.

"The levels reported of 10 sieverts per hour are very high levels and it's going to be very difficult to manage workers going into those areas and doing operations," he said.

"To put the 10 sieverts into context, that 10 sieverts is actually a lethal dose of radiation. So you can't afford to be exposed for more than a few minutes at those levels.

"It means you're directly exposed to fuel rods in the reactors or the spent fuel ponds very closely and while it's possible to get to those levels it means there is very little shielding going on there."

from an ABC News (Australia) report

But, as has been reported in this space, the workers at Fukushima Daiichi already expect to die. 

Abraxas begetteth truth and lying,
good and evil, light and darkness,
in the same word and in the same act.
Wherefore is Abraxas terrible.
It is love and love’s murder.
It is the saint and his betrayer.
It is the brightest light of day
and the darkest night of madness.

–The Seven Sermons to The Dead—

Yesterday the Japanese government expanded the prohibition of the shipment of cattle from another area in the vicinity of the radiation. Iwate prefecture may now not ship cattle along with Fukushima prefecture and Miyagi prefecture. Tochigi prefecture, closer to Tokyo, may soon be added to the list.
More and more food of all kinds, vegetables, seafood and meat. Has been found on grocers shelves with unacceptable radiation levels.
More and more we know and understand that the "clean and safe" nuclear industry  lied to the world and is harming all of us. But I should not have put the verb "lie" in the past tense.
Evil never gives up.

Straight from the Pleroma, Susan Hayward as Sophia

John Boehner, Acting Unconstitutionally?

The antics of the budget shadow show in Washington are fully displaying the fact that our "leaders" are morons or worse.
The so-called tea party types love to cite the Constitution as their only motivator.
They claim this document has been ignored and trashed by the establishment politicians over many years.
In many ways they are right.
In many ways the Constitution is not the wonderful God-given document we might wish to think it is.
But the majority of Congress is now obviously wiping its collective ass with the Constitution when they stand  with the intent to repudiate the debt. They are purposely ignoring their duties or they do not understand the Constitution.
The Constitution clearly states that only Congress has the power to "pay the debt" in Article 1, Section 8.
That implies that no one else in government has that power including the President.
Obviously the Founders would be amazed and confused that Congress would refuse to pay the bills, essentially abrogating their responsibilities under the Constitution. The Constitution never implies that the debt should not be paid. On the contrary, the founding document does not allow Congress to repudiate debt.
The 14th Amendment  reinforces this responsibility of the Congress, as the sole authorized agent of the government, to pay the debt.
From Section 4. "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppression of insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."
In questioning this debt the Congress is acting in an unconstitutional manner.
The Founders did not anticipate that Congress could act so irresponsibly and the Constitution does not address the possibility that Congress would come under the control of irrational rebels, corporate tools, and delusionary madmen.
Some say the President has the right to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, but I disagree.
Only Congress has the power to pay the bills. The fact that they are not doing that reveals that they hate this document they love to cite selectively and wave around to justify their idiocy.
Congress is now being manipulated by the spiritual heirs and in some cases, actual descendants, of those who made rebellion and insurrection against the United States. They are liars when they claim they are following the Constitution. They are, in fact, rebelling against it.
They are especially motivated by their hatred of a President who they, in their heart of hearts, would like to see on the plantation picking cotton.
At the very least, the President must make the Constitutional argument to the Supreme Court that Congress is abrogating their responsibility. This, he is unlikely to do. The President just wants to make love to Republicans, foolishly thinking they will tolerate him in return.
What would happen if the Supreme Court sided with the fools in Congress is another matter.
Or, what would happen if Congress refused to follow an order by the Court to pay the bills is even another matter.
At that point, the President, under his oath to protect the Constitution, might think about arresting members of Congress as rebels and insurrectionists who had failed to carry out their official duties.
That would be fun.

Tea bagger demanding selective fealty to the Constitution.

Addendum:

I have nothing against cutting government spending, by the way. 

But when my bills get too high, I cut back current and future spending. 

I don't decide to just stop paying and repudiate my debt.
That would be wrong, especially if I had the power to create money out of nothing, which the Congress has.

The argument in which Congress must needs  engage will be a difficult and distasteful enterprise for all. 

General laws to "balance the budget" are an obvious evasion of responsibility.
Repudiating the debt is unconstitutional.
They are stage tricks designed to destroy popular social programs that otherwise would be invulnerable to direct attack.
What specific spending must be cut by the Congress?
Answering that question is the essential task of those elected to that body.
They must debate these issues publicly, not spring on the public the wicked spawn of secret talks held in camera.

If they need to choose between war and social security, they need to have an adult and public debate on that. 

If they need to choose between raising taxes on the very rich and shutting down Veteran's Hospitals, they must do it for all to see and hear.
It they need to choose between protecting the environment and giving tax breaks to oil corporations, they need to have a public debate on that too.
If they need to inflate the dollar so that old debt is cheaper, they need to discuss that. 

Math is hard. 

Thoth Tarot, Adjustment

A Solution to the "Debt Crisis"
Or Gettin' rid of "Money for Nothin'"


It's only play money wished into existence by the Federal Reserve.
They don't even print it most of it up anymore. 
It's just binary code on a chip.
It is imaginary money which is implicitly attached  to the promise of labor.
I am in agreement with whose who wish to  Abolish the Fed. 
The people through their government must create the money supply themselves (without the "assistance" of intermediary banker leeches) and retain a certain percentage for their government's operating expenses. 
Hence, no overt taxes will be required to run the federal government..
All money created must be represented by a real physical thing, whether gold, silver, another valuable commodity, or only a promise on a real paper note. 
The magical creation of money as code in a computer must be ended. 
Fractional banking, the creation of invisible imaginary money by a private bank, is the devil's own spawn and must be seen as the criminal act it is. 
The fact that most money is never printed is the only thing holding back massive inflation.
Big time inflation will benefit a lot of people. 
Imagine paying back your debt at 5 cents on the dollar.
That is the banks' and the Fed's worst nightmare.
It would be our equivalent to the Biblical Jubilee.
It would set the people free. 
The bankers have grown rich using black magic long enough. 


Historical note of the day:


On this date in 1932 the United States Army attacked 20,000 veterans of World War I camped in Washington demanding from Congress their promised bonus payments.




Maxim of the Day


Interest is the vilest taxation.  

It has been a most pleasant summer for me in my first year of retirement from the workaday world.
Travel, boating, naps, gardening, reading, and indolence have interfered with my posting here. But perhaps things will change.

Yesterday Vyzygoth hosted Gordon Comstock and myself in a roundtable discussion of Huxley, Orwell, the future, the past, and prognostication.

Listen to it here http://www.vyzygothraw.com/audio/huxwell.mp3

Image via WikipediaJapan considering Tepco breakup: report - MarketWatch

Nationalizing nuclear power is an outstanding idea, if only because nuclear power is always unprofitable business. Why not remove the entitled element  that expects to profit from the undertaking? If you believe that nuclear power is an efficient, useful and safe method of energy generation you are a rare bird. The nuclear industry itself doesn't believe this, else they would not seek government protections from indemnity and government subsidies and assistance at every level of operation. In fact, nuclear power as practiced today is an array of Rube Goldberg contraptions waiting to break down and spew deadly long-lasting human and environment killing poison over extensive areas.

Government should nationalize this beast if only to safely terminate it.

"My ass contemplates those who talk behind my back."- Francis Picabia

JB in Firenze wearing an SEG

My Conversation with Vyzygoth from Italia


Near the end of my two week vacation in Italia I was able to enjoy an impressionistic conversation with Vyzygoth Wednesday from the Veneto about the the land, the people and other things which has now been posted on  Think Or Be Eaten.

Right Click to Save; or Left Click to Listen Up Now!

Flag of Fukushima, Image via Wikipedia

Japanese parents fume over Fukushima radiation impact | Energy & Oil | Reuters

This is a new Antoni Slodkowski Reuters story about the concern Japanese parents have about the impact of the radioactivity on their children. And, of course, the lack of action by the bought-and-paid-for Japanese government to fulfill their promises to remove radioactive topsoil from schoolyards in the affected areas.

From the story:

Local governments now need to provide reports of radiation, while most schools in Fukushima are equipped with dosimeters and teachers have to record hourly radiation readings to help create a contamination map. Anxiety over health risks associated with prolonged stay in a contaminated area is shared by mothers who did not take part in Sunday's rally.
"I just found out that a place near my house was designated a 'radiation hotspot' and now I'm seriously thinking about leaving the city," said Noriko Ouchi, mother of a 4-year-old daughter.
"We are exhausted. We have to look at every food item we eat, we only use bottled water for cooking, and on top of that every day we confront this nagging dilemma whether it's really safe for our children to stay in Fukushima or not," she said.

The Indypendent » What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?

Yes, what happened? I followed this story extensively for a long time but I got bored and frustrated with stonewalling by the Japanese Government/Corporate gang.

Things are bad. They are getting worse.

There is very little new information made available.

And, I was on vacation for a while.
But I am back.

I will get address this topic soon.

Des vacances bourgeoises dans Les Cinque Terre

The Gold Standard Paved the Way For Fiat Money
...And Easy War

This article on Alternet, "9 Signs That We May Be Living Through Another Depression" by Joshua Holland cites the Long Depression of the 19th Century as a similar period to ours. It is interesting to note that the "Long Depression" of the latter part of the nineteenth century from about 1873 to 1896 is very congruent with the period in which bimetallism (the original monetary system of the United States) was slowly supplanted by the strict gold standard, a process encouraged by the Bank of England all over the world during this time.

This stagnant period made it obvious that the strict gold standard was incompatible with a healthy growing economy, something the ancients of any sizable society had previously learned. Mankind had indeed been pinned to a "cross of gold."

However, the solution imposed on the world for this problem was the imposition of fiat money controlled by central banks. It can be argued that this "solution" led to the massive and then endemic wars and preparation for war of the twentieth and twenty-first century. War is not cheap, especially modern war that requires expensive sophisticated weapons and standing armies, and the requirement for gold to fund war had always been a challenge and a limiter for the most ambitious king. Fiat money is created in the gleam of a banker's eye. Solicting investment in war became so much less of a challenge for the governments of the twentieth century.

There are still those who believe that a return to the gold standard will solve all our problems.

Nothing could be further from the truth.
The gold standard created our problems.
When money is a scarce commodity there cannot be much money.
When there is little money there is little commerce. 


I will make man scarcer than pure gold, more rare than the gold of Ophir. ISAIAH 13:12

Note: Joshua Holland also cites Paul Krugman's calling up the similarities between today and the "Long Depression" in this June 27, 2010 column, "The Third Depression." 


The Didn't We Know This All Along? Department


Fukushima radiation was a lot worse than stated.

"The Japanese government has more than doubled the estimate for the amount of radiation released by the Fukushima nuclear plant crippled by the earthquake and tsunami.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), a government nuclear watchdog, also said at a briefing in Tokyo today that it believed reactor cores at some of the units at the complex melted much more quickly than the plant operator had previously suggested."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394902/Japan-nuclear-crisis-More-Fukushima-radiation-released-thought.html#ixzz1OagKDxtA

The Book of Thel, William Blake 

Sunday Morning EDT/

Sunday Evening Japan Time

Spiraling Down the Damn Drain

Update

Let's glance at the situation in Japan. 

It's been a while since we have done that, but as has been observed here all along. 

Things are bad. 

They are getting worse. 

They are still not letting much information out.

Failure To See The Forest For the Trees

Fukushima prefect is home to a flourishing moribund forest products industry. Several managed woodlands are in danger of falling into a state which will make them difficult to use in the near future Digital Journal reports. 

Approximately 341,000 acres (138,000 hectares) in Fukushima Prefecture are under the jurisdiction of five forestry cooperatives, based on information from the Fukushima Prefectural Government and an association of prefecture forestry cooperatives. Located in 11 municipalities, the woodlands are either part of a no-entry zone or required evacuation areas in coming weeks, based on government orders.
“If we can't go in to thin the trees for a year or longer, the underbrush will grow and the saplings that have been newly planted will suffer from lack of sunlight,” said Hiroshi Sagara, a forestry cooperative chief, the Mainichi Daily News (MDN) reports. “The forest will fall into disrepair and trees will fail to grow well.”

An untidy forest must be especially galling and unnerving to the Japanese. 

A small country with limited natural resources must manage well what it has. 

I live on nine acres of Maine woodland which I have begun to maintain in a manner which encourages orderly and healthy growth. It brings great satisfaction to stroll through the more maintained areas. 

Wild and unkempt is not necessarily good.

Yea, you shall leave in joy and be led home secure.

Before you, mount and hill shall shout aloud,

And all the trees in the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the  brier, a cypress shall rise;

Instead of the nettle, a myrtle shall rise.

These shall stand as a testimony to the Lord,

As an everlasting sign that shall not perish. ISAIAH 55.12-13

Tanks For The Memories

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

-Ambrose Bierce

TEPCO, it seems, according to reports,  is now committed to storing highly radioactive water ad infinitum. 

370 water storage tanks capable of holding a total 40,000 tons of water have been ordered by the corrupt and failing corporation in an attempt to prevent radiation from further contaminating the environment. 

TEPCO is reporting that they expect to lose $7 billion this year, not counting expected disaster compensation for the millions of victims of their incompetence. 

Filthy water cannot be washed. ~African Proverb


Yet they shall attempt to wash the filthy water using a French process. An estimated 15 million gallons of radioactive water remain on site in storage and in the ruined plants with more being created all the time in the attempts to calm down the meltdowns and incineration processes going on in the reactors and cooling bins.

Chico Harlan in the Washington Post tells us:

A potential turning point comes roughly two weeks from now, when Tepco plans to begin a treatment process in which water is sucked from the basement rooms and fed into a special tank, then treated with chemicals that eliminate its radioactivity. The process creates a byproduct of radioactive sludge, which is generally mixed with bitumen, poured into drums, then sealed and buried. The water itself can either be cycled back into reactors or discarded into the ocean.

The treatment system is being set up by Areva, a French company that uses the technology at its La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant, off the Normandy coast. Since 1997, Greenpeace — after taking water samples from La Hague’s discharge pipe — has made repeated claims that the supposedly decontaminated water in fact contains radioactivity levels above the regulatory limit.

The process “is not 100 percent, but it’s better than nothing,” Lochbaum said. “The alternative: you let the water simply evaporate and radioactivity carries to all parts far and wide.”

Mary taught me to go merry go round!
We're all going merry go round!
C'mon, c'mon let's merry go, merry go, merry go round! Boop boop boop!
Merry go, merry go, merry go round! Boop boop boop!
Merry go, merry go, merry go round!
I say let's merry go, merry go, merry go round!
I say let's merry go, merry go, merry go . . .
- Wild Man Fischer

Japanese Prime Minister and corporate flunky Naoto Kan will be stepping down this summer, reports the Wall Street Journal, so he can be replaced by another corporate flunky whose soiled and vile dirty laundry  hasn't yet been exposed to the public. Party Chairman Katsuya Okada  refuses to give a date for Kan's departure  because that would make him a lame duck!

It is no wonder that so many beautiful spirits have refused to be born into this world. 

I do believe I've had enough.

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize. ~Saul Bellow

An IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) preliminary report blames the Fukushima Daiichi disaster on inadequate preparedness for tsunamis. The tsunami wall around the complex was 5.7 meters high. The wave that devastated the plant complex was 14 meters high. It is sadly amusing that the land that gave us the word "tsunami" was so unprepared for a real tsunami.

Last week the Japanese government revised exposure limits for children to radiation by a factor of twenty times  previously permitted, causing a furor among parents, which caused the government to back down on this policy. 

If these events haven't caused the obedient Japanese people to rise up and slaughter their venal politicians and greedy corporate men, then nothing will. 

Export of green tea from areas near Fukushima has been banned by the Japanese Government. I ask my strict libertarian friends:  Is this action is a proper function of government?

 She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning

Dolours & lamentations; waiting oft beside a dewy grave,
She stood in silence, listning to the voices of the ground,
Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down,
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit:

"Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile?
Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits and coined gold?
Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling, and affright?
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?"

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek
Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har.

- Final lines, The Book of Thel, William Blake

The Book of Thel, Thel Leaning over the "Matron Clay" and the Worm