Kerosene, Chemotherapy, and Enemy Combatants...

There's nowhere to go. I would much rather run than fight, but running is no longer an option.

The entire history of western civilization has been a slow westward migration. Men and their families, unwilling to live under the thumb of the King, or the Church, or the money-changers, escaped ever westward to the wilderness, and freedom. From Mesopotamia to Europe, from Europe to the Americas, from the east coast to the west coast, we ran. But the King followed us. The Church followed us. The money-changers followed us. Like ticks and fleas they rode our backs, draining us, growing fat on our blood, spreading their malaise.

Money-changers. Carpetbaggers. Profiteers with names like Rothschild, Rockefeller, Mellon, Bush, Carnegie, Warburg, Windsor (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha), and Orange-Nassau. They bring us world wars, central banking, defense contracting, the pharmaceuticals industry, television, communism, colonialism, peak oil, Nazis, and the USA PATRIOT Act.

When there's nowhere left to run, it's time to fight, but I don't know how. I'm not smart enough. It's not like David Rockefeller is going to stand within reach, so I could punch him in the throat. Beatrix Orange-Nassau is a girl, and you don't hit girls, no matter what. Corporations can't be fought - they're abstract concepts. I try to think of ways to combat parasites, or cancer...

Escape from the USA part 4: Ground Control to Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is generally acknowledged to be a pretty smart guy. Stephen Hawking really wants off this planet.

Professor Hawking fears for the survival of the human species. I have to disagree with the good Professor: Humanity will survive, but the how and the who remain in question. I've been looking for another country to live in, or barring that, my own island, but Stephen Hawking has me wondering if I'm thinking big enough.

I need a frontier. There aren't any more frontiers. We're all over this damn planet. A couple of hundred years ago, all one had to do was move west a little, kill all the indians that were already there, and it was free land for the taming. Now all the land is either full or uninhabitable. Antarctica will have some available landmass before too long, but the U.N. will probably claim dominion over it and restrict settlement.

Space... That's a tough one. It's pretty hard to get into space, and pretty hard to stay alive once there. NASA and the other space agencies have all the rockets, and even then, they're limited to the neighborhood of earth orbit. I've heard reports that a permanent manned colony is scheduled to be put on Mars by 2020, but it's going to be a corporate mining colony. I would hate to go all that way to be a corporate slave. I can do that here.

Mars might be too much of a project-planet, anyway. If I went to Mars today and started terraforming, it wouldn't have a breathable atmosphere in my lifetime, and I don't want to live in a can, breathing recycled air. An Earth-like planet has been discovered, a mere twenty light-years away, that might be promising. It reportedly has a similar climate, though I couldn't say as to the atmospheric composition. Twenty light-years is quite a jaunt, too. Conventional rocket technology isn't going to get me there, even if I could hitch a ride.

Einstein said faster-than-light travel is impossible. Who am I to argue with Einstein? Looking at this stuff gives me a headache. Quantum, as far as I'm concerned, means more math than I can contend with. I'm not real thrilled with math as the ultimate expression of reality, anyway. Theoretical physicists are great if one wants to know the circumference of the universe at .1259-to-the-negative-zillionth seconds into the big bang, but they tend to be discouraging when it comes to practical applications. Time travel, for instance, is supposed to be theoretically possible but would require infinite energy. Let me just open up this can of infinite energy, then. I would rather hear what some engineers have to say about it. Maybe I'll ask after this headache clears up.

Damn theoretical physicists. You just can't argue with them! They start talking about paradoxes (paradoci?) and throw up some equations... I can't check their math. They could just be making stuff up, for all I know.

Maybe aliens could give me a lift. I believe in aliens. I believe in UFOs. I do not believe that aliens or UFOs have any direct bearing on my life. I wouldn't trust them, though, if I met them. Would you travel light-years to shake hands with someone? During the golden years of British Colonialism, did the Brits cross the Atlantic to shake hands and make friends with people? No, they went for profit, and had no more regard for indigenous populations than they did for the dodos on Galapagos. H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds after witnessing the treatment of indigenous peoples by British Colonial forces. Wells' Martians wouldn't be likely to offer a ride.

Even Stephen Hawking, perhaps one of the smartest people ever, can't get a ride off this rock. I may have to settle for Antarctica, after all. If I see a UFO with the keys in it, though...

It has to be okay not to like each other...

We're not going to agree, I promise you. Not everyone will ever agree on anything. Hell, three people can't agree what to order on a pizza. Throw politics, religion, or race into the mix, and the world can turn into a shit-storm. (I just got spell-checked on shitstorm.) It has to be okay to disagree.

This guy called for the extermination of white people on C_SPAN. I didn't hear, see , or read anything about it on the news. It's not even that big a deal to me. It's not even worth getting mad about. This was before Imus, too. Of course, whites neither have nor need an Al Sharpton to drum up publicity over verbal slights against caucasians. Such comments are generally perceived as ignorant - like Imus. No one is crying out for this guy's blood, nor should they. Most of the comments about it are "Wow. That's dumb." This guy, though, he has to think about it for a second.

That's all it takes. You don't have to pass a law that makes it illegal to say stupid shit. People are going to be stupid. Stupid people will say stupid things. You can't make it illegal, or everyone would go to jail.

I know, this bill focuses on speech related to violence. That can't be a bad thing, right? Except that violence is already illegal. There was a case in the Dallas Morning News a year or so ago, involving high-school kids. Two guys did such horrifying things to another boy that I won't get into specifics, but the big story was not how two human beings could do that to another, it was about how they called the kid a 'spic' while they did it. The papers all said that that made it racially motivated crime, though it was also reported that the victim had somehow disrespected the sister of one of the assailants. I have a sister. Disrespecting my sister might earn someone a solid beating, and possibly some name-calling, but what these kids did... They were sick, and everyone was concerned about what they said to the guy? That's sick. Violence is already illegal. Speech is just words.

The people most concerned about the passage of H.R. 1592 seem to be christians, due to the fact that they teach that homosexuality is wrong. Homosexuality is actually pretty gross. What someone does in the privacy of their own bedroom is their business, but that doesn't mean anyone has to like it. It has to be okay not to like gay people. I've heard of gay-bashing, and it's wrong to go around beating people up, regardless of the reason. Besides, a lot of them are in pretty good shape. They're not gay because they're scared.

People need to toughen up, I think. What happened to sticks and stones? When I hear someone say something dumb like that I tell them how dumb it is, and why. I don't call the cops.

While still on the topic of race, I would like to point out, on behalf of white people everywhere, that George Bush is not white. George Bush is some kind of reptilian alien bent on the destruction of the earth, and does not in any way represent whites as a whole. We're actually pretty cool, once you get to know us.

If you don't hate me yet, you will in a second...

Switzerland is well known for it's neutrality, it's cheese, Ricola, and little dwarves guarding hoards of gold under the Alps. They speak German, French, Italian, and Romansh, which I've never heard of. I took two years of German in high-school, and while I remember maybe a dozen words of German, it would come right back if I immersed myself in it.

We could learn a lot from the Swiss, but I won't go there. There are too many bankers in Switzerland, and the international banking families are why the world is so screwed up right now. I love everything I've heard about the Swiss and Switzerland, but they shelter the assets of the most evil people in the world. How neutral is that? All the Swiss are armed, so we'll need to hit them with air-strikes and pound those mountains flat, and to hell with the gold.

Yes, I said that. I said we need to bomb Switzerland flat for their contributions to global oligarchy, and I don't even kill spiders. Think about it.

Escape from the USA, Interlude: California uber Alles

You've probably seen the commercial: Ahnold walking along the beach, saying "Velcome to California." "Every day in California is your lucky day."

Every day in California you're lucky to be alive. That commercial didn't show the slums, or the homeless sleeping in doorways about a hundred yards from that very beach. It didn't show Torrance, or Compton, or Oakland, or the parts of Hollywood that don't have stars on the sidewalk. Ahnold wasn't walking down La Cienega, wondering if that guy by the dumpster was sleeping or dead.

I guess the California tourism industry isn't what it used to be. I expect that kind of commercial from Oklahoma, Missouri, West Virginia, Utah, Wisconsin, maybe even New Mexico or Arizona. Not that there's anything wrong with those states, but they're not exactly as high-profile as California, or New York. I've seen Texas tourism ads, too, while visiting other states.

I've been to nineteen of the states, and California was my least favorite. There are some beautiful places in California. California has sun-swept beaches, snow-capped mountains, Big Sur, the Redwoods, the Petrified Forest, and the mighty Los Angeles River. San Luis Obispo is by far the most beautiful place I've ever been, but I won't go back if I can help it. The Californians fuck it all up.

Escape from the USA part 3: Snails are not Food

I like to give France a hard time, but that's mainly because I know they won't fight back. The food isn't really all that bad, but snails are disgusting under any circumstances. It seems that, like the Chinese, the French are willing to cook and eat any part of anything that can't out-run them. Unlike the Chinese, however, the French want to smother it all in mushroom sauce.

Government in France is a convoluted affair, with both a President and a Prime Minister, as well as a legislative body. The French Constitution is a monolithic document with a preamble and eighty-nine articles. I must confess I did not read the whole thing, nor did I fully understand the articles I did read. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens is an inspiring document, though. Unlike the US Constitution, it recognizes the rights of everyone, everywhere, and not just French citizens on French soil. It's no surprise that the French take their government so seriously. Probably most people that will actually bother to read this have heard of the Bastille, the guillotine, centuries of ruthless monarchy, and revolution after bloody revolution.

A word on the French roll-over during WWII: The German War Machine was virtually unstoppable. When those German tanks rolled into Paris it was all but deserted. If the French had stood their ground, they would've been slaughtered. There have been plenty of jokes (my favorite was from Maxim Magazine, a picture of a frog on it's back), but an orderly retreat to regroup, with a covert resistance operating within occupied France, was the only thing they could've done. That being said, I am not going to stop making fun of the French.

Of course, if I intended to move to France I wouldn't be writing about it, I would be trying to work my way across the Atlantic by any means possible. France, while a republic, has embraced socialism, and pays for it with a high rate of unemployment and ridiculous taxes.

So, thanks for democracy, Voltaire, The Count of Monte Cristo, and crepes, France. To repay the favor, I'll send y'all some Lever 2000, and I'll be the first to volunteer if you ever need help with those pesky Germans again.

Escape from the USA part 2: Welcome to the Jungle

I don't know much about Venezuela, except that there seem to be more than two sides to every story. Hugo Chavez tells an entirely different story than does the CIA Factbook. There seems to be a lot of finger-pointing going on, but from what I can gather, everyone who has ever said anything about Venezuela has been lying to some degree.

Anonymous Canadaphiles may be disappointed, but I am not going to attempt to navigate the maze of fact, fiction, and bloody murder that composes the government of Venezuela. Hugo Chavez looks like a snake-oil salesman to me. He was elected in a landslide victory after leading a military coup. American "Nation Building" has steadily worked to overthrow him, but that doesn't make him a hero. He's trying to gather more power to himself, just like Chancellor Bush, and I don't trust anyone with that much power. I don't trust Venezuelan citizens not to kill me arbitrarily for the crime of being born in the States, either. Most of the history of South America in general appears to be bloody power-struggles, in which votes were cast with rifles and machetes.

One of the many things I love about the States is that we typically don't kill each other over political disagreements. I've had some hard-core political arguments, some that almost came to blows, but that's because many people are as passionate in their beliefs as I. The idea of swinging machetes at each other won't even occur to most Americans, except maybe Peach.

Next, I think I'll look into France. I would get a huge kick out of speaking French with my East-Texas accent. Par-lay Fron-say? Wee, paysan filty.

This is going to piss some people off...

Virginia Tech. If you're an emotional person, stop reading now, so we can still be friends tomorrow.

In the Great State of Virginia, the only gun control law is the Second Amendment. There was a gun ban at the Virginia Tech campus. Thirty-two people died because only one person had a gun, and he was doing all the killing. Cops are useless until someone has already died. Cops do not save lives, they catch killers after the fact. You know what would have saved about twenty-nine of those thirty-two people? One other person with a gun handy. I hate to quote a bumper sticker, but I'm going to anyway: When guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.

I do feel bad for the loved ones of the dead and wounded. It was a tragedy, to be certain. I also feel bad for all the other people who died of gunshot wounds yesterday in the rest of the world for no good reason. And those who were stabbed, and beaten to death, and poisoned, and strangled, and blown up, and pushed out of windows, cut open, drowned, burned, run over, tortured, beheaded, hanged, irradiated...

Escape from the USA part 1: Oh, Canada!

I'm getting out of here. It's not so much that I hate America, I just hate what America has become, and I want no part of it. I would renounce my US citizenship, but I found out that a US citizen is actually an employee of the United States, a British-owned corporation founded in 1878. Sovereign citizens are of the respective states. I'm a Texan, you're an Illinoisan, Virginian, New Mexican, whatever. Most people don't realize that, though.

Most people don't realize a lot of things, like how our entire government is out of our control. A lot of people do realize, but don't care as long as they can watch TV, drink beer, hook up over the internet, and buy a new car every couple of years. I can't fix it, so fuck it. I'm out. Where to go, though? My first thought, of course, was Canada. Canadians speak English like natives, and I wouldn't have much trouble blending in. There's the socialism and censorship, though.

I'm big on free speech. I say what I want, when I want, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. that doesn't mean I'm going to walk around talking smack all the time, but that's because I don't want to, not because anyone prevents me. You're just going to have to trust me. If anyone happens to be offended by anything I say... Well, that's tough. Say something back, or walk away, or hit me in the mouth, but you can't shut me up.

Canada is out of the question because they have laws restricting freedom of speech, press, and religion. The Bible and the Koran are both on the list of books banned in Canada. (I have been corrected by a reader [I have a reader!], the Bible and Koran are not banned - that was the wrong list -M) I'm neither Christian nor Muslim, but I reserve the right to change my mind at any time, without notice. I could give my life to Allah tomorrow. In Canada, it is illegal to publicly display an image of Mohammed. It is illegal to say "fag," or "nigger," or "nappy-headed ho's." Spare me your outrage. I'm not saying it's correct to say such things, I'm just saying it's not illegal. That's where it starts. Pass laws restricting "hate speech," and the Ministry of Information follows soon after.

If you don't want someone walking around saying "nappy-headed nigger fag ho" all the time, exercise your right to free speech, and lay down some derision. Peer pressure isn't just for getting your kids to smoke, you know. The influence of societal pressures will outweigh any statute, you just have to do it yourself, instead of asking the same government that has screwed up everything else to do it for you. Pussies.

Voltaire said "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." That was a long time ago, though. Most people nowadays are so desperate to stay alive they'll give whatever wealth they managed to accrue in their lifetimes to pharmaceutical companies before they die anyway. Few people, nowadays, would be willing to die for their right to do anything. That's why our rights are being violated on a daily basis. Die free or live as a slave? Let me think about it... I get to continue living, right? Can I have cable? Still thinking...

That's crap. Life as a slave is not a life worth living. Sorry, Canadians, but... Wait, I'm not sorry. Y'all are polite, though. Very well mannered. It strikes me as odd, though, that you can smoke pot on the steps of the Ministry of Health, but you can't read Huckleberry Finn.

I had to laugh like hell...

Thanks for everything, Kurt.

Dying bees...

An article on Prison Planet today says that bees are dying off in alarming numbers, and if bees go extinct, humans will be next.

I've been a fan of Alex Jones for a long time. I think of him as the guy watching for snakes when you're out camping. Sometimes he sees snakes, sometimes he sees a clump of bark that looks like a snake. Usually, though, he sees a knot of snakes so big nobody can believe it exists. I won't say I believe every word he says, but when he says "Snake!" I go check it out.

So, dying bees in alarming percentages. That's honestly something I never thought of. I like bees. They don't sting unless someone gives them a reason. Even if they get on you, just brush them off. Stay calm, and you'll be fine. My theory in childhood was that the sensitive chemical receptors were capable of picking up some kind of fear pheromone that agitates them. I think the same thing about dogs. It's not enough to pretend you're not afraid, you have to actually be unafraid - a neat trick if you can pull it off. And then there's honey. Honey is the best food ever. I just try not to think about the fact that it's delicious bee-vomit. Peanut-butter and honey is vastly superior to peanut-butter and jelly, and honey is a great sweetener for tea. I think I'm more moved by the threat to my honey supply than anything else.

I try not to be alarmist (I know, my last post was called "The end is nigh." I said I try), and I have that natural tendency to be a skeptic when something seems unbelievable. So I seek out a second source to confirm or deny. A google search for "dying bees" turned up 1,370,000 hits, with articles from environmentalists, horticulturists, apiarists (those are beekeepers), and blog posts from hikers and campers commenting on all the dead bees. Some of these posts go back a couple of years, but one from COSMOS Magazine was published yesterday. MSNBC and ABCNews have both reprinted AP articles about it, but there has been extremely little mention of it from the mainstream media that I've been able to find.

So it appears this is real. Bees are dying by the millions. I'm not an environmental expert, but I paid attention in ninth-grade biology class, when we talked about both pollination and extinction. Mrs. Wolfe was worth paying attention to. Anyway, I don't know enough to make dire predictions about how we're all going to die. We are all going to die, but not necessarily at the same time, and not necessarily from this. My main concern is that this is a big deal, it's verifiable, it has potential for global impact, and I haven't heard a word about it from the mainstream media.

I've become something of an annoying letter-writer. I try to express my opinion in a way that will have an effect. I write emails to these media fuckers. Here's a list, if you'd like to do the same. Ask someone what's up with the dying bees. Ask someone why you've hardly heard the name Ron Paul on TV, while the pitifully childish antics of Hillary and Barack get all the attention. Ask them whatever you want. You don't have to dress it up. Type two sentences and hit "send." That's all it takes. You should pick up the pen, now, though, so you don't have to pick up the sword later. And by later I mean really soon.

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The end is nigh...

Not really, but times are going to get very tough, very soon. I've been looking into this for close to a year now, and I will share my findings with those of you who bother to read these paranoid rantings.

The seas are going to rise. We will suffer another dustbowl along with the coming depression. Whether you believe it's CO2 or just the sun getting hotter (It's the sun), the results are the same. Crops will fail, livestock will die. Africa will suffer a lot. This is all over the news, so I'm not going to bother quoting sources. Things are going to be tough all over for a while.

Unless you want to end up as a ward of the state, with some New Deal type of socialist system supporting you, take heed.

First: If you have a lawn, start growing something. You're probably aware that most peoples' survival skills consist of going to the grocery store. If there is not as much at the grocery store, the price will rise. Not that it will matter, because our failing Federal Reserve Note will be all but worthless. Grow a variety of vegetables, and use as much land as you can. If you don't own your land, or perhaps live in a condo or apartment, get with your neighbors. There is arable land around, and you and your neighbors can share.

Second: Buy silver. Right now. Drop what you're doing, cash in any investments you may have, and buy silver. The stock market is still going to crash, and when it does, the Fed will constrict the money supply again, just like they did in the '30s. That's where depression comes from. Forget gold, because enough of it is concentrated in one place for the market to be manipulated. There is too much silver around for anyone to corner the market. It's been tried. It's not as valuable as gold, but that's okay. It'll still be infinitely more valuable than Federal Reserve trash.

Third: A water filter. You will need potable water, and boiling only kills the microorganisms. You want to remove contaminants as well.

Finally: If you don't own a gun, go get one. Get several. The main difference between this dustbowl and the last will be the newly Federalized National Guard "keeping the peace." Doors will be kicked in, and people will start to disappear. People you know.

Feel free to disbelieve anything I say about conspiracy. I'm not going to argue that point. I want to be wrong as much as you want me to be wrong. Global warming is happening now, though, regardless of what you may think is causing it. The seas will rise. Weather patterns will be altered. We're talking plague, famine, and war on a biblical scale. As Americans, we've been conditioned to think it can't happen to us. Just be glad you weren't born in Africa.

Fourteen year old domestic terrorists...

I needed a break. By nature I'm a pretty cheerful guy, and when I focus this long on such things as politics and corporate corruption it takes a toll on me. I get tired of this shit, but the shit keeps coming. I keep saying “This is shit!” and I keep hearing “Nah, that's just what rain looks like now.” It gets tiring.

I'm not even going to talk about Iran. I'm going to do what I think Congress should do and focus on something closer to home. You all know about the Patriot Act, and the attacks on our Constitutionally protected rights. You've also heard what can happen to people accused of “terrorism.”

According to ABCNews, this is the first time a domestic crime has brought a charge of terrorism. It's a fourteen year old boy. From the article, I would say this is an episode of a dork gone wild. He was a smart kid, who had never been in trouble before, who allegedly had an elaborate plan to take his classroom hostage and kill at least one randomly selected girl. He didn't even get close to pulling off his plan, because he stupidly gave himself away early. Such a smart kid, but he didn't really think that through, did he? This kid isn't a terrorist, this kid just needs some help, or maybe a swift kick in the ass.

After Columbine, though, they'll probably have security guards and metal detectors at that school tomorrow (just in case any other students were planning to take their classes hostage), and it will be hard to argue against a charge of terrorism. By his own admission, according to the article, he was going to take his class hostage and kill someone. That just seems like terrorism. What is terrorism, if not murder and the taking of hostages? My argument is this: Murder is already a criminal charge. Hostage-taking is already a criminal charge. Either one of those charges is already enough to put someone away for life, and for murder, might even limit the duration of said life. There's no need for another charge to throw on top of those. It's redundant. A charge of terrorism also eliminates the rules regarding due process. I doubt the full scope of the terrorism legislation will be applied to this child, but it paves the way for domestic charges of terrorism. This story will be followed for a moment, but never really hyped by the media. The next time it happens, though, it will seem normal to a lot of people. No one will raise an eyebrow when they start seeing charges of terrorism in police reports in the Metro section. The process will take years, but terrorism will be a common charge before too long.

In a sea if information, little things can slip by. The cage door is closing.