Before Katrina hit the coast Bush had declared Louisiana and Mississippi disaster areas, allowing FEMA to swing into action.
If FEMA was already preparing before Katrina struck at Bush's instruction, then why did it still take them four days to really begin rescue operations? And why isn't anyone talking about Bush's early disaster declarations now?
Obviously, officials would have been aware of the possibility of massive flooding, so they would have obtained the necessary vehicles. The trucks that did eventually roll into New Orleans even drove through flooded streets without a problem...
This story disappeared off of MSNBC's web site, but it can still be found in Google's cache.
[. ..] the so-called looters are simply grabbing water, food, diapers and medicines, because the federal and state officials have refused to provide these basic necessities.
Les says that "it's only because of the looters that non-looters -- old people, sick people, small children -- are able to survive."
Those people who stole televisions and large non-emergency items have been selling them, Les reports (having witnessed several of these "exchanges") so that they could get enough money together to leave the area.
Think about it:
- People were told to leave, but all the bus stations had closed down the night before and the personnel sent packing.
- Many people couldn't afford tickets anyway.
- Many people are stranded, and others are refusing to leave their homes, pets, etc. They don't have cars.
You want people to stop looting? Provide the means for them to eat, and to leave the area.
Some tourists in the Monteleone Hotel paid $25,000 for 10 buses. The buses were sent (I guess there were many buses available, if you paid the price!) but the military confiscated them to use not for transporting people in the Dome but for the military. The tourists were not allowed to leave. Instead, the military ordered the tourists to the now-infamous Convention Center.
How simple it would have been for the State and/or US government to have provided buses for people before the hurricane hit, and throughout this week. Even evacuating 100,000 people trapped there -- that's 3,000 buses, less than come into Washington D.C. for some of the giant antiwar demonstrations there. Even at $2,500 a pop -- highway robbery -- that would only be a total of $7.5 million for transporting all of those who did not have the means to leave.
Instead, look at the human and economic cost of not doing that!
So why didn't they do that?
On Wednesday a number of Greens tried to bring a large amount of water to the SuperDome. They were prevented from doing so, as have many others. Why have food and water been blocked from reaching tens of thousands of poor people?
On Thursday, the government used the excuse that there were some very scattered gunshots (two or three instances only) -- around 1/50th of the number of gunshots that occur in New York City on an average day -- to shut down voluntary rescue operations and to scrounge for 5,000 National Guard troops fully armed, with "shoot to kill" orders -- at a huge economic cost.
They even refused to allow voluntary workers who had rescued over 1,000 people in boats over the previous days to continue on Thursday, using the several gunshots (and who knows who shot off those rounds?) to say "It's too dangerous". The volunteers didn't think the gunshots were dangerous to them and wanted to continue their rescue operations and had to be "convinced" at gunpoint to "cease and
What seems to be misunderstood is the reason why information is classified. Information is protected because of the sensitivity of the source that provides that information, whether is be HUMINT, satelite, etc. In many cases, our source of information with regard to our enemies is dependent on no more than one solid source. If that source is lost, or the knowledge of the capability is revealed to others, our intelligence would be compromised.
So if we don't protect the black-ops, we might find out exactly how and where they're screwing everybody and be able to do something stop it.
Gee. That'd be just horrible.
The stage-production of 'neighboring warring nations' which need to spy on one another is just that; a stage production created so that people can offer up over-simple rationalizations for continued secrecy and fear-based social controls.
I can think of a dozen things in my own life I wish I'd never known and for which I won't sleep well ever again. But for those with even a shred of conscience, the price of knowledge of some things is to be forever peturbed by them and the only release is death. I feel for those who have to keep those secrets who can never again know ignorance.
For the shallow out there who need everything as an irreverent joke, consider what you'd give to never have seen your dad step naked out of the shower or your mother's c-section scar or your grandmother needing a sponge bath. Some things you just don't need to know or see.
This is the pure essence of the Wrong kind of thinking. It is FEAR and the need to control that which causes fear.
There isn't a SINGLE thing I would rather not have known in my life. --And I have seen and know some extraordinarily horrible things; I know how bad the dark side can get.
Guess what? This does not take away from my ability to love and to shine and to exist in a joyful state. KNOWLEDGE is what makes people strong and able; knowledge gives you the option to choose and to overcome your little quirks of weakness. --To seek out your inner patches of darkness and destroy them.
Seeing your father naked? Seeing scar tissue on your mother? Why is your father's body frightening to you? He's human like everybody else. You should love and honor him regardless of whether he is clothed or naked. Your mother's scar tissue is evidence of great trials she had to go through. How can you not be proud of her for that? Your parents are people, and they are not perfect and their journeys through life are difficult, but they are making the journey and they deserve your love and respect for that; not your fear and disgust.
And yes, both the Democrats and Republicans have kept secrets. Big deal. I don't fall for the "Good Cop Bad Cop" game. It's for the birds.
-FL
Those who have the courage of a Lion will not have the fate of a mouse.
Competition works to our benefit in some of the ways you describe, however, there is a dark flip-side to competition.
--And that is, when too much power agregates, it is possible for the players with all the power to dictate the rules of the game, as well as the moves available to the rest of the players. To stack the deck, so to speak, so that even a superior business model, (for instance), is unable to survive.
This is why the ultra rich families tend to stay ultra rich. They did it by designing and controling the world currency systems, the legal systems and the choices which are made in how infrastructures are established. The Rothschildes, Rockefellers and their ilk may have gotten rich through competition and cleverness hundreds of years ago, but they maintain their wealth today through inbreeding and through manipulating the systems in which the illusion of 'competition' functions. Truly competing systems which might upset this balance tend to be rubbed out. Scientists who think too much do get murdered and not infrequently.
In natural livings systems which do not have the added component of self-awareness and the ability to plan and solve problems through rational thinking, the model of competition is the only one available, and thus it works as is seen in the animal and plant kingdoms. It appears to be the superior system because there are no alternatives. Those kingdoms, however, are difficult and uncomfortable to live in.
There is nothing wrong with using our intelligence to transcend such barbaric systems with a little balanced planning. For instance. . .
I choose to share my time and resources with my neighbors rather than compete and fight with them and live behind bars and locks, (that's what competition means; 'fighting'.). The result is that I am a trusted and honored member of my town. My life is very comfortable and stress-free. Indeed, the people I know who also behave in a non-competetive way also tend to be trusted, honored and comfortable in their lives. Those who are lazy and do not contribute to our town, in turn are not contributed to, and so they cannot drain the system. They either learn to contribute or they live in isolation with no support structure. It works very well.
Now, is this communist thinking? I don't know and I honestly don't care, because it has led to a happy, healthy community. This does not mean that competition is necessarily a bad thing; healthy competition keeps people sharp. But if the level of competition slips out of balance, it reduces people to stressed-out savages willing to lose their human traits in trying to replicate behaviors seen in the animal kingdom.
Why embrace that which we know works in a harsh and brutal way, (all-out competition), when we have the tools to make something far more effective and comfortable? In a very real sense, those who do not stretch to take advantage of their higher human qualities are the ones who are being lazy and afraid.
In other words. . . Why let the 'free' market, (which is anything but 'free' as it is tightly controled by elitist money), determine gas prices, and indeed, the nature of our energy systems, when we could have planned something far superior in the first place?
I find it amazing that by changing a couple of numbers on big posted signs above gas stations, the entire nation goes bananas with fear and anxiety.
Chill, already.
The world was painstakingly set up so that people depend deeply, emotionally on the flow of oil and money; to connect those things to well-being and the ability to obtain food and shelter.
That's silly.
The world is capable of making just as much food today as it did yesterday, and it has just as many houses and places for people to shelter comfortably in. So why should a few numbers stop people from eating and living?
Are people really going to starve and feel fear just because a few numbers start to change? For goodness sake! There's food and shelter aplenty. All we need to do is work to maintain and share it and everybody will be fine. (We could start by perhaps firing the CEOs and Government officials who throw chairs across board rooms and try to hang on to old family money by way of keeping the people stupid and subjugated.)
The whole confabulation of banks and economic crises, yadda, yadda, was designed in such a way that it was very easy to upset it and thus extract a fine flow of fear and anxiety. Like tapping trees for maple syrup.
News Flash: The economy is ENTIRELY a fabrication of people's belief systems; It is just as healthy as the world believes it to be. Be a part of the solution. Love is the answer.
Perhaps this contrived oil scarcity will give the much-needed kick in the pants to get alternative power sources a boost in acceptance levels. It doesn't actually take that long to implement massive infrastructure changes so long as the people in the driver's seats want them to come about.
did a psychopathic lunatic playing 'CEO' throw a chair across the board room in outlandish rage and threaten to, "f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill XXXXXX!"?
The solution is to do a terrible job of fixing things, make up a bunch of stories promoting fear and crime, and then send in weapons, thus proving that humans are wild animals which need to be controlled through force and restrictive measures?
Great paradigm. I roll to Disbelieve. I get a +100 bonus, because my character can see that the Emperor Has No Brain.
When shit hits the fan, be happy! It is an opportunity to help your neighbors and to spread calm and love and resources! Be kind and supportive work hard to make things better, folks! It's the only way out.
Remember; the most important things in life are not things.
Why control the crowd? God sent His agent, the angel Katrina, to show us the truth of human nature.
Hm. I don't see how God can think that way. God is infinite, after all, which means it's impossible for God to care. --God is the Hurricane, God is New Orleans, God is each and every person in that mud-hole. God is the mud. And God is you and me. Maybe you already get it, but I do enjoy pointing it out; Infinite means there is nothing God is not, and thus God cannot judge, because God is both sides of every coin.
This New Orleans thing is just Karma balancing the scales. And I don't think the goal is to become disgusted with what we are so much as it is to learn that it is far less painful to be selfless than it is to be selfish. Every bit of pain and joy is a lesson. --And one of the biggest is learning not to judge; to be disgusted with ourselves means that we hate ourselves simply because we don't know the answers yet. That's not an effective way to learn. Learning is not about hating what we are, but about learning how to love, and this cannot be achieved through hate.
This guy is far from a hero. I think he's clearly some kind of psychopath.
I think you have to be careful where you throw that term. --'Psychopath' is a word with real application in this world, and mis-applying it to immature or thoughtless actions is dangerous. Some souls are struggling to grow while others are simply not there. Learn to discern!
Then somewhere way down the line, George Lucas started making enough money to produce his films independently of the messed up system. Star Wars could have been so, so, so cool if they hadn't been made so poorly.
Though, I did like the last one quite a lot. It wasn't fantastic, but it did pull the weiner out of the fire. In any case, it's hard to make a film which shines a light on corrupt government these days. The three most recent films from 'Phantom' to 'Revenge' deserve a tip of the hat for that alone.
I look forward to the 'Firefly' film. (Another universe with an oppressive empirical authority at the top of the food chain.)
such a system as you suggest is instantly jumped on by the average American yuk and decried as, "Communist! Evil! Kill it!"
The amazing thing is this. . .
The system you suggest is already available to anybody who wants to live it. It is in disguise as and integrated into the current mercantile system, but I am a working example. I am a writer/creator who lives by these means. I have found that if you give and shine as brightly and as honestly as you can, if you follow your true path wherever it leads, then you will find that the universe provides. Give and trust, (but don't wishfully think or blind yourself or get lazy), and things will fall into place.
The trick is showing how this works to everybody. You don't have to create books or music. You can create houses and food, or serve coffee or drive a bus. So long as it's what you love to do, so long as you are following your internal compass, and so long as you are fearless and willing to drop everything to help out those people around you who are also following paths of openness and fearlessness, then you are going to be provided for. It's a very powerful and self-sustaining system, and the American Right has a good reason to shrink from it, as it uproots greed and fear, which are the life-blood of the Neo-con empire.
Okay. Let me summarize some of the arguments in a friendly game of. . . PONG!
Player 1: This whole library using DRM nonsense is retarded, and people are being fooled with this into accepting a rational excuse for the Devil to take a mile with the inch. --The only reason books need to be returned to a library is so that another person can have the opportunity to borrow it. When the file is digital, it can be distributed to as many patrons as need it. Wanting a file to self-destruct when it is 'late' has no basis in rational thinking. It's just another waft of the petty stench which is fear and the desire to control and limit knowledge. The difference is that people have been so hammered by the concept that limits are a good idea that they are now actually willing to accept the idea of self-destructing files from the public library. What a load!
(PING. . !)
Player 2: Ah, but think of the hard working writer and poet and Hollywood movie professional. . . A library is not a bookstore. If the patron is allowed to take home a book forever, then what incentive is there to ever buy again? Without setting artificial limits, creators have no income for all their hard work! Think of all your favorite books which would never have been written if the author had to have a regular day job to keep the bills paid. . !
(PING. ..!)
Player 1: Stupid argument. ALL writers have day jobs except for Daniel Steele, Stephen King and that lady who wrote the Harry Potter stuff. Writers write because they must, not because they're paid to!
(PING. ..!)
Player 2: What?! That's the dumbest load of crap I've ever heard! Just because creators are working in a system which chooses to punish them does not make punishing them right. Everybody else gets paid, from the publisher all the way down to the guy who loads ink into the presses, so why not the author?
(PING. . !)
Player 1: Yeah, okay, okay. I was being a bit of an ass with that one, (though it IS true; writers write regardless of whether they are compensated or not. It's the nature of creative drive). But I still think that DRM in libraries is chumpy. It shouldn't be there. Information wants to be free! How else can society prosper? By making information available only to the wealthy? That's evil!
(PING. . !)
Player 2: Well, now that's not fair. That's not what I'm suggesting. All I'm saying is that the author should be compensated, and when books can be taken out of the library forever in digital format over the internet, then the chances of the author ever selling another book shrinks to zero. Information DOES want to be free, and unless we set up controls for this, then it WILL be free and the authors will suffer. And that's wrong.
(PING. . !)
Player 1: Okay. I'm not even going to get into the argument of how much money actually ends up with the authors and how much ends up with the assholes who are fighting so hard to implement these copy protection laws. But I will say this: Libraries have a book-buying budget. Why not simply make micro-payments from that budget to an author each time the book is downloaded?
(PING. . !)
Player 2: Oh, please. What's to stop an unscrupulous author from downloading his own book two hundred times from each library in order to make money? What happens when the library runs out of cash? Should they just stop making the book available? That's dumb!
(PING. . !)
Player 1: Well. . , it was just an idea. I didn't say it was perfect yet. All I'm saying is that there are other options. What do YOU think should be done, if you're so smart?
(PING. . !)
Player 2: Well. . , I don't know. It's not like millions of people haven't been fighting with this question for several years now with no resulting wisdom rising to the top. Paying Hard Working Creators, or Making Know
In one of the several Miles Vorkosigan novels, the Ender-like genius needed a file from a military protected computer system. He was assured that there was simply no way to by-pass the high level protection system. A file will simply not leave the computer it is on unless the user had the correct authority, etc.
This was just a minor blip in Mile's day (to paraphrase); "What? But I absolutely need to read that file. Can't you just send it to me?" (This is over a telecom system. He was phoning from deep space or somewhere to a buddy in mission control.)
"Sorry, Miles. There's just no way. This file will simply not leave this terminal."
"Well. .." Miles thought. "Why don't you just turn the terminal around so that it faces the vid camera, and I can just read it from here."
"Hm. Okay."
Done and done. He earned a commendation for that one. The security chiefs in sci-fi books aren't very bright, it seems.
If the ice melts, the global water level will go down.
Good logic here, but the model is much more complex. It's not so much about water levels as it is about energy.
With that much water being warmed up, there's a lot more activity in the biosphere, which changes many, many things. During the 1400's, altered weather patterns in combination with high tides created storms which ravaged population centers all along England's and Europe's coasts. And this was during a period of mini-ice age cooling, not heating.
Caffeine. It raises your level of alertness and awareness without otherwise affecting your judgement. It sharpens you.
The only other drug like this generally available is Nicotine. Sharpens you up, makes your thinking clearer and doesn't impair judgement.
The first government in the world to begin a public perception campaign to prevent the use of Nicotine? Why, that would be the Nazi Party. Why would they not want their populace thinking clearly, I wonder. . ?
Personally, I don't use either drug. I've never smoked or felt the need to. (It's pretty hard to find non-corporate tobacco these days. No big surprise there. If you can't stop people from smoking, then you'd better make sure the stuff they're smoking contains a ton of extra poisons in order to off-set any advantages.)
--And I have found recently that caffeine has changed how it affects me so I've stopped drinking it for the time being. I miss coffee, but in the last year especially, I've found I've gained access to a lot of new emotional bandwidth, (I don't really know how else to describe it; being a guy is getting complicated these days as the human race continues rapidly to wake up in interesting ways!), and I seem to need to work on managing this before I can go adding extra octane to my brain.
Without the coffee, I find I'm much more steady. Not quite my old self, but definitely better. Heck, with the java, I felt like I was pregnant or something. Sheesh!
You can always count on Time Magazine for choice adjectives.
Emotionally charged public relations terminology designed to create specific reactions in the reader. (So much for impartial journalism). The Chinese have been getting this profiled rap for a while now. (They are systematic! They think like machines! They are hungry for our resources! Blah, blah, blah.)
What makes it doubly dangerous is that the Chinese are being stirred up in exactly the same way. If the people of the world would stop believing the propaganda, would stop paying their taxes and stop supporting giant corporations, we'd have a lot fewer wars!
Time Magazine is one of those social engineering tools which makes me groan every time I pick it up.
It reports the same old state-sanctioned, 'official' story every time, asks no worthy questions, and challenges none of the important limits. Remember: Time supported the whole, "Americans to the Rescue in Iraq" parade.
To quote Cindy Sheehan:
"Now I am being vilified and dragged through the mud by the righties and so-called "fair and balanced" main stream media who are afraid of the truth and can't face someone who tells it by telling any truth of their own. Now they have to twist, distort, lie, and scrutinize anything I have ever said when they never scrutinize anything that George Bush said or is saying."
If Time Magazine says we should fear Chinese hackers, then all that means is the Bush league wants to raise the fear level surrounding the web so as to make way for increased controls and further powers for monitoring and the option for precision lock-down, etc.
I really think the new agey "everything humans do besides sitting in a ditch poking berries up thier noses is UNNATURAL AND THEREFORE EEEEEVILL AND BAAAAAD" nonsense is really dangerous magical thinking. We can't go back to the stone age just to make sure every last chipmunk lives a happy healthy full life and its just ludicrous to think so.
I think this is an extremely distorted viewpoint. --I have met thousands of different people from all walks of life and the, "Magical Hippie" only makes up a tiny, tiny percentage of the people out there, and none of the ones I've met have been politically active. --Usually they're just stoned kids in their teens and early twenties exploring that mode of being, (i.e., being stoned and anti-establishment and talking a lot and doing little). I've always seen that the moment such people become politically active or do something to affect the world, their views are forced by necessity to become much more practical. --As are their concerns. (Working to fight the building of garbage dumps on top of the water source a city drinks from. Complaining about nuke reactors with track records of leaking radioactive toxins into the water supply. Complaining about air pollution, destructive zoning laws, food and drug laws, etc. These are not trivial or foolish things to be concerned about, and yet, such people seem to easily draw ire from ignorant, irrational and selfish conservative knee-jerk thinkers. (A group which, by contrast, I have met many, examples of in the course of my life).
The personality type, "The Magical Hippie" does, however, provide a convenient (albeit largely non-existent) group to complain about if you are ignorant, and enjoy complaining.
I think we CAN manage Earth's resources wisely and we CAN produce the vast energies that will be required for the next stage of human civilization on Earth and we CAN do it without destroying the planet if we just use our heads and rigorously apply the scientific method.
Rigorously applying scientific method, eh?
--It'd be nice if a few scientists actually did this from time to time rather than regularly provide doctored data to placate their fund providers and to avoid being laughed at by a peer group trained to both ridicule and to fear the same.
The number of people who are trigger-happy with the 'Tin Foil Hat' joke on Slashdot is an excellent working example of the fear of ridicule felt by the thinkers of our society, -and their desire to punish others as they have similarly been hurt for having been different back in school. Scientists are perhaps the last people we should expect a full scope of rational thinking from; their emotional triggers and scarring simply goes too deep. Basically, I have found that the moment an idea, -no matter how objectively rational it may be-, once it goes outside the bounds of socially accepted thinking, --and it's important to note that the boundary here is a social one, and not, as is always claimed, an objective or scientific boundary, then the average person shouting 'scientific method' will act like a frightened teen-ager with thin arms and glasses wildly trying to plant abuse and ridicule on others so as to avoid having it land on themselves.
Yes, I agree that we can work to manage energy concerns in a responsible way, but getting angry about a version of environmentalist which doesn't exist makes little sense. --As does placing a lot of faith in a scientific community which has consistently served to further the ends of the corporate fossil fuel power brokers and the military industrial complex via nuclear technology.
There are ways of doing things which do respect life and sanity a great deal more than things have been done thus far. --Why saying so upsets people to such a degree is a fascinating question unto itself.
Long Live, and Prosper. --And I mean that with all my heart!
But please. . .
Get good writers, directors and lighting crew. Please.
Fan-made works often have little quality control because fans are usually operating from a state of unconditional love for their obsession. (Bless 'em!) Thing is, 'unconditional' doesn't cut it at the movies, because good work only happens under GOOD conditions, which means fans need to stay critically objective as well as just enthusiastic.
Though, I must say, I did see Butterfly Effect and thought it was quite enjoyable.
And I don't hate Michael Moore. --He may not be a journalist of extraordinary integrity, but at least he's doing the job as described on his business card, which is far, far more than 99% of the other talking heads have done for this past decade. What's wrong in asking questions in a media culture which is doing everything it can to sell the Bush/Israeli agenda? --I'd have liked him to ask the really hard questions, (about Israel and the questions surrounding the shady details of the 9/11 attacks themselves), but he probably did what he could get away with without being killed in a small plane crash.
You're not another boring Neocon sympathizer, are you?
Congratulations on discovering Existential Angst now that you're in your (undoubtedly early) twenties. Don't forget to pick up your black t-shirt on the way out.
Close but. . . Well not even close. No cigar anyway.
I'm in my mid-thirties, I don't wear black, and I skipped past Existential Angst because I've never been one who believed in wasting a lot of time being deliberately sad for no good reason.
When I say that there are FAR more interesting things in life than plastic crap, I mean things which are also FAR more interesting than wallowing in self-pity. Life is amazing and beautiful and exciting, but this doesn't mean I don't turn my nose up when a stinky cloud of corporate offal floats by. It's not because I think I'm 'better'; it's because it makes me feel annoyed and barfy. Gut reaction.
Even a cusory understanding of physics - in particular relativity and quantum mechanics - shows that this statement is not reflected in reality.
I have a cursory understanding of physics, and as I understand it, small patterns are indeed sometimes seen replicated in much bigger systems. --I'm not saying I'm right about the founding principals of Astrology, but it's one of several possibilities I was thinking my way through.
Here's another entirely different one. . .
The sun is divided into 12 different segments, like an orange, each with a magnetic signature different from the one on either side of it. Living organisms have been shown to grow and react differently depending on the type of naturally occurring electro-magnetic radiation they are exposed to.
Slashdot Mirror
And Mitchel Cohen writes. . .
So if we don't protect the black-ops, we might find out exactly how and where they're screwing everybody and be able to do something stop it.
Gee. That'd be just horrible.
The stage-production of 'neighboring warring nations' which need to spy on one another is just that; a stage production created so that people can offer up over-simple rationalizations for continued secrecy and fear-based social controls.
-FL
For the shallow out there who need everything as an irreverent joke, consider what you'd give to never have seen your dad step naked out of the shower or your mother's c-section scar or your grandmother needing a sponge bath. Some things you just don't need to know or see.
This is the pure essence of the Wrong kind of thinking. It is FEAR and the need to control that which causes fear.
There isn't a SINGLE thing I would rather not have known in my life. --And I have seen and know some extraordinarily horrible things; I know how bad the dark side can get.
Guess what? This does not take away from my ability to love and to shine and to exist in a joyful state. KNOWLEDGE is what makes people strong and able; knowledge gives you the option to choose and to overcome your little quirks of weakness. --To seek out your inner patches of darkness and destroy them.
Seeing your father naked? Seeing scar tissue on your mother? Why is your father's body frightening to you? He's human like everybody else. You should love and honor him regardless of whether he is clothed or naked. Your mother's scar tissue is evidence of great trials she had to go through. How can you not be proud of her for that? Your parents are people, and they are not perfect and their journeys through life are difficult, but they are making the journey and they deserve your love and respect for that; not your fear and disgust.
And yes, both the Democrats and Republicans have kept secrets. Big deal. I don't fall for the "Good Cop Bad Cop" game. It's for the birds.
-FL
Those who have the courage of a Lion will not have the fate of a mouse.
--And that is, when too much power agregates, it is possible for the players with all the power to dictate the rules of the game, as well as the moves available to the rest of the players. To stack the deck, so to speak, so that even a superior business model, (for instance), is unable to survive.
This is why the ultra rich families tend to stay ultra rich. They did it by designing and controling the world currency systems, the legal systems and the choices which are made in how infrastructures are established. The Rothschildes, Rockefellers and their ilk may have gotten rich through competition and cleverness hundreds of years ago, but they maintain their wealth today through inbreeding and through manipulating the systems in which the illusion of 'competition' functions. Truly competing systems which might upset this balance tend to be rubbed out. Scientists who think too much do get murdered and not infrequently.
In natural livings systems which do not have the added component of self-awareness and the ability to plan and solve problems through rational thinking, the model of competition is the only one available, and thus it works as is seen in the animal and plant kingdoms. It appears to be the superior system because there are no alternatives. Those kingdoms, however, are difficult and uncomfortable to live in.
There is nothing wrong with using our intelligence to transcend such barbaric systems with a little balanced planning. For instance. . .
I choose to share my time and resources with my neighbors rather than compete and fight with them and live behind bars and locks, (that's what competition means; 'fighting'.). The result is that I am a trusted and honored member of my town. My life is very comfortable and stress-free. Indeed, the people I know who also behave in a non-competetive way also tend to be trusted, honored and comfortable in their lives. Those who are lazy and do not contribute to our town, in turn are not contributed to, and so they cannot drain the system. They either learn to contribute or they live in isolation with no support structure. It works very well.
Now, is this communist thinking? I don't know and I honestly don't care, because it has led to a happy, healthy community. This does not mean that competition is necessarily a bad thing; healthy competition keeps people sharp. But if the level of competition slips out of balance, it reduces people to stressed-out savages willing to lose their human traits in trying to replicate behaviors seen in the animal kingdom.
Why embrace that which we know works in a harsh and brutal way, (all-out competition), when we have the tools to make something far more effective and comfortable? In a very real sense, those who do not stretch to take advantage of their higher human qualities are the ones who are being lazy and afraid.
In other words. . . Why let the 'free' market, (which is anything but 'free' as it is tightly controled by elitist money), determine gas prices, and indeed, the nature of our energy systems, when we could have planned something far superior in the first place?
-FL
It's a rule of thumb to help order one's already biased thinking. Nothing more.
-FL
Chill, already.
The world was painstakingly set up so that people depend deeply, emotionally on the flow of oil and money; to connect those things to well-being and the ability to obtain food and shelter.
That's silly.
The world is capable of making just as much food today as it did yesterday, and it has just as many houses and places for people to shelter comfortably in. So why should a few numbers stop people from eating and living?
Are people really going to starve and feel fear just because a few numbers start to change? For goodness sake! There's food and shelter aplenty. All we need to do is work to maintain and share it and everybody will be fine. (We could start by perhaps firing the CEOs and Government officials who throw chairs across board rooms and try to hang on to old family money by way of keeping the people stupid and subjugated.)
The whole confabulation of banks and economic crises, yadda, yadda, was designed in such a way that it was very easy to upset it and thus extract a fine flow of fear and anxiety. Like tapping trees for maple syrup.
News Flash: The economy is ENTIRELY a fabrication of people's belief systems; It is just as healthy as the world believes it to be. Be a part of the solution. Love is the answer.
Perhaps this contrived oil scarcity will give the much-needed kick in the pants to get alternative power sources a boost in acceptance levels. It doesn't actually take that long to implement massive infrastructure changes so long as the people in the driver's seats want them to come about.
-FL
Just wondering.
-FL
Great paradigm. I roll to Disbelieve. I get a +100 bonus, because my character can see that the Emperor Has No Brain.
When shit hits the fan, be happy! It is an opportunity to help your neighbors and to spread calm and love and resources! Be kind and supportive work hard to make things better, folks! It's the only way out.
Remember; the most important things in life are not things.
-FL
Hm. I don't see how God can think that way. God is infinite, after all, which means it's impossible for God to care. --God is the Hurricane, God is New Orleans, God is each and every person in that mud-hole. God is the mud. And God is you and me. Maybe you already get it, but I do enjoy pointing it out; Infinite means there is nothing God is not, and thus God cannot judge, because God is both sides of every coin.
This New Orleans thing is just Karma balancing the scales. And I don't think the goal is to become disgusted with what we are so much as it is to learn that it is far less painful to be selfless than it is to be selfish. Every bit of pain and joy is a lesson. --And one of the biggest is learning not to judge; to be disgusted with ourselves means that we hate ourselves simply because we don't know the answers yet. That's not an effective way to learn. Learning is not about hating what we are, but about learning how to love, and this cannot be achieved through hate.
-FL
I think you have to be careful where you throw that term. --'Psychopath' is a word with real application in this world, and mis-applying it to immature or thoughtless actions is dangerous. Some souls are struggling to grow while others are simply not there. Learn to discern!
-FL
Then the Zionists got in the game by association.
Then somewhere way down the line, George Lucas started making enough money to produce his films independently of the messed up system. Star Wars could have been so, so, so cool if they hadn't been made so poorly.
Though, I did like the last one quite a lot. It wasn't fantastic, but it did pull the weiner out of the fire. In any case, it's hard to make a film which shines a light on corrupt government these days. The three most recent films from 'Phantom' to 'Revenge' deserve a tip of the hat for that alone.
I look forward to the 'Firefly' film. (Another universe with an oppressive empirical authority at the top of the food chain.)
-FL
The amazing thing is this. . .
The system you suggest is already available to anybody who wants to live it. It is in disguise as and integrated into the current mercantile system, but I am a working example. I am a writer/creator who lives by these means. I have found that if you give and shine as brightly and as honestly as you can, if you follow your true path wherever it leads, then you will find that the universe provides. Give and trust, (but don't wishfully think or blind yourself or get lazy), and things will fall into place.
The trick is showing how this works to everybody. You don't have to create books or music. You can create houses and food, or serve coffee or drive a bus. So long as it's what you love to do, so long as you are following your internal compass, and so long as you are fearless and willing to drop everything to help out those people around you who are also following paths of openness and fearlessness, then you are going to be provided for. It's a very powerful and self-sustaining system, and the American Right has a good reason to shrink from it, as it uproots greed and fear, which are the life-blood of the Neo-con empire.
-FL
This was just a minor blip in Mile's day (to paraphrase); "What? But I absolutely need to read that file. Can't you just send it to me?" (This is over a telecom system. He was phoning from deep space or somewhere to a buddy in mission control.)
"Sorry, Miles. There's just no way. This file will simply not leave this terminal."
"Well. .
"Hm. Okay."
Done and done. He earned a commendation for that one. The security chiefs in sci-fi books aren't very bright, it seems.
-FL
Good logic here, but the model is much more complex. It's not so much about water levels as it is about energy.
With that much water being warmed up, there's a lot more activity in the biosphere, which changes many, many things. During the 1400's, altered weather patterns in combination with high tides created storms which ravaged population centers all along England's and Europe's coasts. And this was during a period of mini-ice age cooling, not heating.
It'll be interesting to see how we are affected.
-FL
The only other drug like this generally available is Nicotine. Sharpens you up, makes your thinking clearer and doesn't impair judgement.
The first government in the world to begin a public perception campaign to prevent the use of Nicotine? Why, that would be the Nazi Party. Why would they not want their populace thinking clearly, I wonder. . ?
Personally, I don't use either drug. I've never smoked or felt the need to. (It's pretty hard to find non-corporate tobacco these days. No big surprise there. If you can't stop people from smoking, then you'd better make sure the stuff they're smoking contains a ton of extra poisons in order to off-set any advantages.)
--And I have found recently that caffeine has changed how it affects me so I've stopped drinking it for the time being. I miss coffee, but in the last year especially, I've found I've gained access to a lot of new emotional bandwidth, (I don't really know how else to describe it; being a guy is getting complicated these days as the human race continues rapidly to wake up in interesting ways!), and I seem to need to work on managing this before I can go adding extra octane to my brain.
Without the coffee, I find I'm much more steady. Not quite my old self, but definitely better. Heck, with the java, I felt like I was pregnant or something. Sheesh!
-FL
Emotionally charged public relations terminology designed to create specific reactions in the reader. (So much for impartial journalism). The Chinese have been getting this profiled rap for a while now. (They are systematic! They think like machines! They are hungry for our resources! Blah, blah, blah.)
What makes it doubly dangerous is that the Chinese are being stirred up in exactly the same way. If the people of the world would stop believing the propaganda, would stop paying their taxes and stop supporting giant corporations, we'd have a lot fewer wars!
-FL
It reports the same old state-sanctioned, 'official' story every time, asks no worthy questions, and challenges none of the important limits. Remember: Time supported the whole, "Americans to the Rescue in Iraq" parade.
To quote Cindy Sheehan:
If Time Magazine says we should fear Chinese hackers, then all that means is the Bush league wants to raise the fear level surrounding the web so as to make way for increased controls and further powers for monitoring and the option for precision lock-down, etc.
Same old game. New arena.
-FL
I think this is an extremely distorted viewpoint. --I have met thousands of different people from all walks of life and the, "Magical Hippie" only makes up a tiny, tiny percentage of the people out there, and none of the ones I've met have been politically active. --Usually they're just stoned kids in their teens and early twenties exploring that mode of being, (i.e., being stoned and anti-establishment and talking a lot and doing little). I've always seen that the moment such people become politically active or do something to affect the world, their views are forced by necessity to become much more practical. --As are their concerns. (Working to fight the building of garbage dumps on top of the water source a city drinks from. Complaining about nuke reactors with track records of leaking radioactive toxins into the water supply. Complaining about air pollution, destructive zoning laws, food and drug laws, etc. These are not trivial or foolish things to be concerned about, and yet, such people seem to easily draw ire from ignorant, irrational and selfish conservative knee-jerk thinkers. (A group which, by contrast, I have met many, examples of in the course of my life).
The personality type, "The Magical Hippie" does, however, provide a convenient (albeit largely non-existent) group to complain about if you are ignorant, and enjoy complaining.
I think we CAN manage Earth's resources wisely and we CAN produce the vast energies that will be required for the next stage of human civilization on Earth and we CAN do it without destroying the planet if we just use our heads and rigorously apply the scientific method.
Rigorously applying scientific method, eh?
--It'd be nice if a few scientists actually did this from time to time rather than regularly provide doctored data to placate their fund providers and to avoid being laughed at by a peer group trained to both ridicule and to fear the same.
The number of people who are trigger-happy with the 'Tin Foil Hat' joke on Slashdot is an excellent working example of the fear of ridicule felt by the thinkers of our society, -and their desire to punish others as they have similarly been hurt for having been different back in school. Scientists are perhaps the last people we should expect a full scope of rational thinking from; their emotional triggers and scarring simply goes too deep. Basically, I have found that the moment an idea, -no matter how objectively rational it may be-, once it goes outside the bounds of socially accepted thinking, --and it's important to note that the boundary here is a social one, and not, as is always claimed, an objective or scientific boundary, then the average person shouting 'scientific method' will act like a frightened teen-ager with thin arms and glasses wildly trying to plant abuse and ridicule on others so as to avoid having it land on themselves.
Yes, I agree that we can work to manage energy concerns in a responsible way, but getting angry about a version of environmentalist which doesn't exist makes little sense. --As does placing a lot of faith in a scientific community which has consistently served to further the ends of the corporate fossil fuel power brokers and the military industrial complex via nuclear technology.
There are ways of doing things which do respect life and sanity a great deal more than things have been done thus far. --Why saying so upsets people to such a degree is a fascinating question unto itself.
-FL
Long Live, and Prosper. --And I mean that with all my heart!
But please. . .
Get good writers, directors and lighting crew. Please.
Fan-made works often have little quality control because fans are usually operating from a state of unconditional love for their obsession. (Bless 'em!) Thing is, 'unconditional' doesn't cut it at the movies, because good work only happens under GOOD conditions, which means fans need to stay critically objective as well as just enthusiastic.
But I'll be crossing my fingers! Good luck, guys!
-FL
Or perhaps that should be. . .
The world is a science fiction novel when this sort of thing doesn't seem weird.
-FL
Though, I must say, I did see Butterfly Effect and thought it was quite enjoyable.
And I don't hate Michael Moore. --He may not be a journalist of extraordinary integrity, but at least he's doing the job as described on his business card, which is far, far more than 99% of the other talking heads have done for this past decade. What's wrong in asking questions in a media culture which is doing everything it can to sell the Bush/Israeli agenda? --I'd have liked him to ask the really hard questions, (about Israel and the questions surrounding the shady details of the 9/11 attacks themselves), but he probably did what he could get away with without being killed in a small plane crash.
You're not another boring Neocon sympathizer, are you?
-FL
Expectations limit. Perhaps you're not shaking your head hard enough to break free.
-FL
Close but. . . Well not even close. No cigar anyway.
I'm in my mid-thirties, I don't wear black, and I skipped past Existential Angst because I've never been one who believed in wasting a lot of time being deliberately sad for no good reason.
When I say that there are FAR more interesting things in life than plastic crap, I mean things which are also FAR more interesting than wallowing in self-pity. Life is amazing and beautiful and exciting, but this doesn't mean I don't turn my nose up when a stinky cloud of corporate offal floats by. It's not because I think I'm 'better'; it's because it makes me feel annoyed and barfy. Gut reaction.
-FL
I have a cursory understanding of physics, and as I understand it, small patterns are indeed sometimes seen replicated in much bigger systems. --I'm not saying I'm right about the founding principals of Astrology, but it's one of several possibilities I was thinking my way through.
Here's another entirely different one. . .
The sun is divided into 12 different segments, like an orange, each with a magnetic signature different from the one on either side of it. Living organisms have been shown to grow and react differently depending on the type of naturally occurring electro-magnetic radiation they are exposed to.
-FL