“Contemporary American culture is the most powerful in history, and the most destructive of competitor cultures… It stresses comfort and convenience—ease—and it generates pleasure for the masses… The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.” —Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Ralph Peters, U.S. Army

All  indicators point downward, I tell you. On the lobotomy box the other  night I stumbled on what seemed to be sock puppets standing behind  rostrums and hypnotically intoning “The American People…the  American People…the American People.”

Puzzled,  I speculated that it might be a troupe of performing autistics,  but soon understood that it it was a debate among Republican candidates  for the presidency. Why use people, I wondered? We could do it as  well in software. Computer graphics, small recorded vocabulary,  narcotic rhythm. Easy.

I raise this question because, in regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven’t even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration. I’ve never received an offer from my rulers, so I certainly have not accepted one; and rather than consideration, I have received nothing but contempt from the rulers, who, notwithstanding the absence of any agreement, have indubitably threatened me with grave harm in the event that I fail to comply with their edicts.

What monumental effrontery these people exhibit! What gives them the right to rob me and push me around? It certainly is not my desire to be a sheep for them to shear or slaughter as they deem expedient for the attainment of their own ends.

Moreover, when we flesh out the idea of “consent of the governed” in realistic detail, the whole notion quickly becomes utterly preposterous. Just consider how it would work. A would-be ruler approaches you and offers a contract for your approval. Here, says he, is the deal.

I, the party of the first part (“the ruler”), promise:

(1) To stipulate how much of your money you will hand over to me, as well as how, when, and where the transfer will be made. You will have no effective say in the matter, aside from pleading for my mercy, and if you should fail to comply, my agents will punish you with fines, imprisonment, and (in the event of your persistent resistance) death.

(2) To make thousands upon thousands of rules for you to obey without question, again on pain of punishment by my agents. You will have no effective say in determining the content of these rules, which will be so numerous, complex, and in many cases beyond comprehension that no human being could conceivably know about more than a handful of them, much less their specific character; yet if you should fail to comply with any of them, I will feel free to punish you to the extent of a law made by me and my confederates.

(3) To provide for your use, on terms stipulated by me and my agents, so-called public goods and services. Although you may actually place some value on a few of these goods and services, most will have little or no value to you, and some you will find utterly abhorrent, and in no event will you as an individual have any effective say over the goods and services I provide, notwithstanding any economist’s cock-and-bull story to the effect that you “demand” all this stuff and value it at whatever amount of money I choose to expend for its provision.

(4) In the event of a dispute between us, judges beholden to me for their appointment and salaries will decide how to settle the dispute. You can expect to lose in these settlements, if your case is heard at all.

In exchange for the foregoing government “benefits,” you, the party of the second part (“the subject”), promise:

(5) To shut up, make no waves, obey all orders issued by the ruler and his agents, kowtow to them as if they were important, honorable people, and when they say “jump,” ask only “how high?”

Such a deal! Can we really imagine that any sane person would consent to it?

Yet the foregoing description of the true social contract into which individuals are said to have entered is much too abstract to capture the raw realities of being governed. In enumerating the actual details, no one has ever surpassed Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who wrote:

To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Beverley Robinson. London: Freedom Press, 1923, p. 294)

A foul mood has settled in over enough of America for it to be palpable. For all the good it will do us, there is a US presidential election in a little over nine months from now. With one asterisked exception, all are made men and women, promising but never delivering what we have been conditioned to think we want. People foolishly voting for the words “Hope and Change” were instead treated to the third term of George Bush.

What affects the Republic is a cancer and if left untreated it will surely kill the host. Cancers do not leave of their own volition. They must be removed by force or their environment made so toxic they die off. The environment that this particular cancer thrives on is literally flooded with apathy, willful ignorance and denial. Making the environment inhospitable to this cancer requires that the elements present in that environment that allow it to thrive must be reversed in polarity. That will be very difficult given that a significant portion of that environment gets some or all of its sustenance from the cancer itself and real change, even the very idea of real change, has been and will continue to be met with significant resistance.

This cancer is not new; it is an old cancer, well documented and capable of learning from its mistakes. What is different this time is that there are formidable defenses present in this particular host, defenses that have never been present in any prior host. Will those defenses be brought to bear on this insidious cancer that has eaten its way into the soul of the Republic, and if so, will it be in time to save it? From one perspective, it seems that the only barrier to activating these defenses is simply the will to do so.

If you do not currently have a suitable amount of your local currency on-hand (that is to say, NOT in your bank) to weather the shock waves of a sovereign default that cannot be swept under the “innovative financial instruments” rug, now would be a good time. There may be more “holidays” on the calendar than we are all currently aware of.

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial or investment advice. It is a blog post.

EDIT: I have no idea what is up with Remus. I suppose it is possible he really did move to Montana, but it is not likely.

Weather around Camp Remus has been unusual and prone to extreme – in particular the heat. The heat has played havoc with gardening and some of the violent storms have toasted more than a few pieces of electronic equipment.

The global economic situation continues to deteriorate, the gutting of sovereign treasuries continues unabated and future generations continue to be sold into financial slavery. And what will become of America? We are no longer the land of the free, we’ve become the land of debt slaves. We are no longer the home of the brave, but rather the home of can-kickers and boot-lickers; feverishly snorting line after line of stepped-on debt-laced Hopium. Fucking pathetic.

FEAR. UNCERTAINTY. DOUBT. (F.U.D.) These are the WMD being wielded against us. Even in the flushest of times, the future is never guaranteed. If you succumb to the fear of the unknown, the uncertainty of the future and doubt your own resourcefulness and resolve, well, your future probably won’t change for the better.

Buckle up – the ride gets rougher. I gotta get back to work.

What DOES matter is at what point do the terms and conditions under which you and yours live become intolerable enough for you to seek redress through open revolt? Do you have a checklist of freedoms which you deem absolutely inviolate? Upon what principles will you take a stand? Where is your line in the sand? The answer to like questions started this country and how honestly you answer, assuming you have the mettle to ask, may well determine its future.

Veterans Exempt Flag, War of 1812

Ka'aba in Mecca

The unrest in the Middle East is not about islamists trying to take power, but a cycle of abusive Imperial power coming to an end. Saudi Arabia is a particularly sticky situation in that at about a million barrels a day (out of  a rather nasty twenty million barrel a day habit) it is the number three source of US oil imports, behind Canada and Mexico. It is not a democracy or a paragon of civil liberties, which combined with our oil dependency, puts the US in a tight spot, or it should.

I suspect, but have no proof, that the full US aided and abetted ruthlessness of the House of Saud will be brought to bear (remember they have Religious Police) if it looks for a moment that an uprising or a revolution might bring it down. If that were to fail to quell an uprising, then the specter of US military intervention and possibly US troops on Saudi Arabian soil again looms large. That didn’t work out well for us the last time. Some Saudis (if you believe the official narrative) expressed their displeasure rather violently in New York and we wound up with two wars, the Patriot Act et al, Sarah Palin, champion poodles, a whole lot more animosity towards the US in the Middle East and, by some accounts, an Indonesian madrassa educated Kenyan Muslim in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Imagine US combat troops (infidel crusaders, if you will) in full battle regalia, stomping around in Riyadh or the oil fields in support of the House of Saud. How that gets spun as anything but about the oil I haven’t a clue, but spun it will be. I am sure my proselytizing neighbors here in Redstateistan find the prospect of armed missionaries witnessing at will and finally getting a Christian church built in Mecca to be the answer to their heathen salvation wet-dreams, but I am guessing even hardcore Neocons realize that US military intervention in Saudi Arabia has the potential to be a clusterfuck on a, ahem, biblical scale.

Should the idiots in the Pentagram-on-the-Potomac decide that this time it is different, the geography of Saudi Arabia presents every opportunity for redemption. Riyadh, the bulk of the oil fields and the troublesome rabble are in the eastern provinces whereas Mecca and the number two Islamic holy spot Medina are in the western provinces, albeit easily accessible from the Red Sea. But whatever they decide to do, the first rule of engagement should be, in bold letters and in the current military parlance, STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MECCA.

Just my two pre-1982 cents.

Static. Nuttin’ but static.

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I am seeing reports on the Google Realtime feed and some blogs that the Al Jazeera English website itself is not accessible in the US and perhaps Canada. I can confirm that if I use a US IP address, I cannot load the website. Using a European IP, I get it fine. Hmmmm.

There is still the Youtube feed (scroll down the page a bit for the live feed) as well as others I’ll try to post later.