america is being divided and conquered...,

libertyblitzkrieg |   If there is to be any hope of reclaiming our government and restoring our freedoms, it will require a different kind of coup: nonviolent, strategic and grassroots, starting locally and trickling upwards. Such revolutions are slow and painstaking. They are political, in part, but not through any established parties or politicians.

Most of all, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, for any chance of success, such a revolution will require more than a change of politics: it will require a change of heart among the American people, a reawakening of the American spirit, and a citizenry that cares more about their freedoms than their fantasy games.

You may read the above and think he’s being overly negative, but as someone who spends all his time analyzing what’s happening, I think his assessment of the situation is 100% accurate. The American public is by and large being successfully manipulated into cheering on its own slavery, as it remains focused on why other Americans are the enemy instead of seeing the status quo system as the rightful problem.

To hammer the point home, let’s revisit a passage from my recent post, If Senseless Violence Continues, America Will Be a Total Police State in No Time:

While we don’t know who the police murderers in Dallas were, or their motivations, we do know one thing. Their actions will unquestionably have several very counterproductive and dangerous outcomes.

1. Further divide the country in general.
2. Further the already wide distrust between the police and the general public.
3. Increase the likelihood of more violence, and the eventual imposition of a total police state in America.

Either the people who committed the murders had the above goals in mind, or they were just stupid, violent criminals who didn’t have the meager sophistication necessary to understand the extremely negative implications of their actions.

Unfortunately for us, the horrible massacres that occurred in Dallas are exactly the sort of thing that the status quo wants to see. It further divides the public and it creates a justification for more militarization of the police, more surveillance and less civil liberties. Guess who’s going to be most negatively impacted by all of that? Black people, poor people, and the disenfranchised generally.

Anyone who thinks senseless violence will solve the issues of oppression in America doesn’t understand America or the status quo. Executing police in a premeditated manner gives the establishment credibility, and solidifies its support amongst the silent majority as well as the upper classes. The marginalized cannot win a battle if that’s the case. Period, end of story. If you think otherwise, you’re in for a rude awakening.

It’s been eight years since the financial crisis and look at our choices for President. An ego-maniac with authoritarian tendencies and zero respect for civil liberties/the Constitution and a neocon, war criminal, Wall Street-owned corporatist in liberal sheep’s clothing. Unfortunately, this is how far we’ve progressed politically in the near decade since the status quo bailed out the privileged and crushed everyone else.

So what does this mean? It means we are in for a very real struggle in the near-term. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are unabashed authoritarians who worship at the altar of state power and centralization. If I’m right and the real battle of our time is between decentralization/ liberty and centralization/authoritarianism, neither one of these candidates offer anything for us in the freedom camp. Unless some sort of miracle occurs, the next President will be someone who strongly believes in the centralization of power and will push with all of his or her might to further aggregate power in the office of the executive and in themselves. The negative macro trends will continue.

so relieved the pink panthers are in cleveland to protect citizens, policy overseers, and mr. miracle...,

cleveland |  Members of a western Ohio militia marched into downtown Cleveland for a second straight day carrying semi-automatic rifles to safeguard people, property and police during the 2016 Republican National Convention.

"If the cops don't care for it, we will," said West Ohio Minutemen member Dan Stevenson.

He and other members of the West Ohio Minutemen patrolled single-file around Public Square Tuesday, donning camouflage military fatigues, semi-automatic rifles and two-way radios.

Stevenson said the seven-member group, based in Lima, would do its part to keep people safe if the thousands of police officers and law enforcement officers from around the country are unable to handle the crowds outside the convention.

the huey p. newton gun club

vice |  One of the bleak ironies of what happened in Dallas is that, while the city's police department has a dismal reputation among much of the population, Dallas's police chief, David Brown, is one of the most reform-minded in the country. Brown has overseen a recent drop in excessive force complaints and shootings by the police—and his own son was killed in a shootout with the police in 2010.

Darren X claims that he and other members of the gun club had left the early in the evening, feeling that the march was "too watered-down... they were singing church spirituals and 'We Shall Overcome'... We understand that not everyone is a militant, but it was just not something we were interested in." 

While they were driving home, they passed police cars racing downtown, and assumed that BLM protesters had blocked an intersection. "We had no idea police officers were being assassinated." 

Everyone, particularly armed black gun clubs in Texas, should be worried about what will happen next—it's possible that there will be more attacks on police across the country, and potentially a dragnet or fearful, retributive clampdown against armed black radicals. 

Darren X told me the group would continue to organize and advocate for black Second Amendment rights, but added, "We are aware of the possibilities of what could happen... there are thousands of white militias here in America with .50-caliber machine guns and automatic weapons. While there is a lot of attention being directed at the few black gun clubs, we're outnumbered 1,000 to one." 

When I asked Balogun if he was worried about what might happen next or if Huey P. might get the brunt of blowback in the aftermath, he said he was not and would continue to organize to get justice for the victims of people shot by the Dallas police. He emphasized that he would be defiant if authorities tried to peg what happened on him or members of Huey P.

"I will not cooperate with any investigation process. I will not speak to any police, FBI... I'm not cooperating with any police agency in the United States of America."

was gavin long in the same parking garage in dallas as micah johnson?

getoffthebs |  Police believe that long allegedly killed at the scene during the shootings was the lone assassin and no other assassins are believed to be at large. State Police Colonel Mike Edmondson said at a press conference there is no active shooter situation ongoing, but investigators are working to determine if the gunman had any assistance from co-conspirators.

However, we found a video showing the first five minutes of the Dallas shooting, that shows Long walking up a ramp in the parking garage where Micah Johnson, the alleged Dallas Gunman was allegedly killed by a bomb detonated by the Dallas police.

Could it be a coincidence that Long who was videotaped in the same parking garage that Micah Johnson was allegedly killed in did not know each other?  Sure, anything is possible, but the chances of there being no connection between Long and Johnson, both alleged police killers, being in the same garage with each other two weeks prior to the Baton Rouge shooting, is highly unlikely.

Long went to Dallas prior to the attack on police officers on July 7, 2016, according to a video Long posted on Youtube on July 10. He was there to give out his self-published books

“I am NOT affiliated with Anyone!” Long said in his brief video that, “if anything happens with me – because I’m an alpha male, I stand up, I stand firm and I stand for mine til the end, til the last day in this flesh, but I’m not the flesh, I’m not the body, I have a body – but I just want to let ya’ll know, don’t affiliate me with nothing.” He said, “I’m affiliated with the spirit of justice, nothing else.”

Long posted on conspiracy theory websites focusing on government surveillance and monitoring, according to CNN. He was a member of a “support group” called “Freedom from Covert Harassment and Surveillance,” a site about “gang-stalking” that aims to help those “marginalized and abused by” things including “remote brain experimentation” and “remote neural monitoring of an entire humans (sic) body.”

Long was allegedly in possession of several high capacity ammunition clips and a Saka AR type rifle, coincidently the same model rifle that Micah Johnson, James Wesley Howell  (failed gunman for planned Gay Pride Parade massacre) and alleged Orlando gunmanOmar Mateen were allegedly found with.

curious how three black shooters thought they were "targeted individuals"...,

kansascity |  Long served seven months in Iraq and was discharged in August 2010 with the rank of sergeant, according to Marine Corps records.

He attended infantry school and the Marine Corps Communications Electrical School. Records show that he was a data network specialist in the Marines and served in Okinawa and California.

In Apri1 2015, Long contacted a California organization that serves as a support group for people who believe military or government officials are electronically tracking and harassing them.

The harassment can vary from mild to severe, with some of the worst cases allegedly involving the use of secret weapons to inflict pain, according to victims, who call themselves “targeted individuals.”

Long asked to be put on the organization’s “buddy list” while living in West Africa. But a month later, he deactivated his account without explanation, according to the organization, People Against Covert Torture & Surveillance International, also known as PACTS International.

Long is at least the third “targeted individual” to become a mass shooter in recent years, said Derrick Robinson, PACTS’ executive director.

Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old civilian contractor, killed a dozen people at the Washington Navy Yard in September 2013 before police killed him. Two weeks earlier, Robinson had exchanged emails with Alexis, who thanked PACTS for finally providing answers to things happening to him.

“In his case, he was suffering from hearing voices, from microwave burns, from stalking activity and something else. I don’t remember,” Robinson said. “He was very confused about what was going on. He wanted some answers.”

Alexis asked Robinson for addresses of other victims so that he could write to them, but Robinson said he could not give out that information.

“Two weeks later he walked into the Navy Yard and blew away 12 people,” Robinson said.

In November 2014, another “targeted individual,” lawyer Myron May, opened fire at the Florida State University library before police killed him. He believed government “stalkers” were firing a direct energy weapon at him to inflict pain.

Long had posted a video of May on his YouTube channel. That leads Robinson to believe Long patterned his shooting rampage off May, who may have patterned his Florida State shooting after Alexis and the Navy Yard.

Based on YouTube videos posted by Long, it appears Long thought the Marines were targeting him and keeping him from getting jobs, Robinson said.

Long apparently served as a contact for people who believed they were targeted and were seeking help from another group, the Columbus, Ohio-based nonprofit Freedom From Covert Harassment and Surveillance.

That group describes itself as a support group for people marginalized by electronic harassment campaigns, often at the hands of government or law enforcement personnel.

The group’s January newsletter included its “buddy list,” a series of regional contacts offering support for people subjected to these types of campaigns. That list had Long’s e-mail as the contact for victims in Burkina Faso, a western Africa nation.

Officials with Freedom From Covert Harassment and Surveillance were not immediately available for comment.

As for Long’s book? By Monday afternoon, Amazon had taken down the page listing it.

covert harassment and surveillance?

freedomfchs |  Sadly, by the time that an ‘unwitting’ citizen has been so horrifically abused by these technologies and systems they have been wrongfully label by our society; as the abuse of human life in such manors as documented in the ‘DOD Joint Targeting of Individuals and Groups’, or by the DOD Directive 5240.1-r – All U.S. Persons and Others can be used for Human Experimentation; these victim (targets) have become marginalized members of their communities and society in these United States.

Marginalized and abused by such U.S. Patents as; Remote Brain experimentation, Remote Neural Monitoring of an entire Humans Body; manipulated by such evil technologies as Patented Voice-to-(Human)-Skull (the forceful 24/7 of projected noise to a citizen’s head) even to Remote Burns by high powered lasers, or burns by Directed Energy and more.  All released Patents by our country, and for what?  The approved testing and evaluation on ALL U.S. PERSONS for pleasure.  Citizens are now also reporting remote use of these technologies to RAPE MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN. With documented proof or an array of intelligent citizens of our country, we all have come together to attempt to stop these harms as even our children are not exempt from the FOREGIN or DOMESTIC corporations and their approved Patents.

Our funds and programs are used to alleviate and help those suffering and or to carry out research and lobbying activities to influence government policy on various Human Rights issues and when possible to help members financially through their crisis when possible.

Many of these technologies abuses we as a ‘Peaceful’ organization have come together to educate our country about have been approved for decades. Approvals of Technologies (development, testing and evaluation) by small groups of Senators and others in our government as Appropriations, or such ‘OPEN-CALLS’ from such government institutions as the (NIH) National Institute of Health as an example with an open-call for Radiation Experiments on Woman and the (HHS) Health and Human Services who is documented as the ‘over-seer’ of non-consensual human experimentation which is still illegal and unethical.  What those in charge of our countries safety had not realized that every Appropriations Budget and Bill contains development, testing and evaluation on humans.  Development, testing and evaluations that labeled cities, states and regions of these United States of America and are cataloged in the Library of Congress for your viewing.  These dangers of granting contracts to Foreign and Domestic corporation’s agencies, pharmaceutical companies, scientist and even researchers and individuals, labeled as ‘government contractors’ have brought forth the development of these reckless and severe harms that are affecting EVERY LIVING THING.  From the testing and spraying of chemicals as a mass disposal of dangerous chemicals that have proven to affect our weather, asthma attacks and even damaging our drinking water, yet they continue and ‘do not fall with any individual’s name on them?’  The spraying of chemicals including Nano-sensors from drones that no one has questioned in our night skies includes the mass release of nanotechnologies where the sensor payloads are defined in four categories; GPS (to light the human body when attached painfully to your skin), to IR (Infrared to light the human body, property or other living thing), to Chemical (injection of choice), to Biological (again, injection of choice including induced heart attacks, strokes, aneurysm, blood disease, and rear cancers), and yes as documented in the age-old DOD Joint Targeting of Individuals and Groups (law-abiding).  As intelligent citizens of this country, we all know that such evil actions against an entire country, WITH NO ONE BEING EXEMPT from these harms is bizarre, crazy, unbelievable, so we ask that you read the document for yourself.  Who would write such a document to state that ‘even they the writers’ are not exempt, who.  Yet this document continues to be passed to agency to agency, corporation to corporation, first responder to first responder, as we could go on, as we all are becoming sicker and sicker, with even more rare diseases and no one says a word.  This is the Objective of FFCHS, to educate our citizens, our cities, our country that these documented harms must be stopped before more than 6.8 million now reported increases to the estimated 318 million citizens.  There is no need for weaponized drones (uav/uas) flying over our homes land injuring innocent citizens for pleasure and theft or our privacy, they are not hoovering over for our security with armed directed high power laser weapons that can destroy an entire home with on shot. Or weaponized weapons that can, just for the fun of it, stop a vehicle engine and result in a multi-vehicle accident even death, and no one hold these groups responsible for their actions, no one.

the greenbaum speech...,

reddit |  Here’s where it appears to have come from. At the end of World War II, before it even ended, Allen Dulles and people from our Intelligence Community were already in Switzerland making contact to get out Nazi scientists. As World War II ends, they not only get out rocket scientists, but they also get out some Nazi doctors who have been doing mind-control research in the camps.

They brought them to the United States. Along with them was a young boy, a teenager, who had been raised in a Hasidic Jewish tradition and a background of Cabalistic mysticism that probably appealed to people in the Cult because at least by the turn of the century Aleister Crowley had been introducing Cabalism into Satanic stuff, if not earlier. I suspect it may have formed some bond between them. But he saved his skin by collaborating and being an assistant to them in the death-camp experiments. They brought him with them. 

They started doing mind-control research for Military Intelligence in military hospitals in the United States. The people that came, the Nazi doctors, were Satanists. Subsequently, the boy changed his name, Americanized it some, obtained an M.D. degree, became a physician and continued this work that appears to be at the center of Cult Programming today. His name is known to patients throughout the country. 

[Pause] 

What they basically do is they will get a child and they will start this, in basic forms, it appears, by about two and a half after the child’s already been made dissociative. They’ll make him dissociative not only through abuse, like sexual abuse, but also things like putting a mousetrap on their fingers and teaching the parents, "You do not go in until the child stops crying. Only then do you go in and remove it." 

They start in rudimentary forms at about two and a half and kick into high gear, it appears, around six or six and a half, continue through adolescence with periodic reinforcements in adulthood. 

Basically in the programming the child will be put typically on a gurney. They will have an IV in one hand or arm. They’ll be strapped down, typically naked. There’ll be wires attached to their head to monitor electroencephalograph patterns. They will see a pulsing light, most often described as red, occasionally white or blue. They’ll be given, most commonly I believe, Demerol. Sometimes it’ll be other drugs as well depending on the kind of programming. They have it, I think, down to a science where they’ve learned you give so much every twenty- five minutes until the programming is done. 

They then will describe a pain on one ear, their right ear generally, where it appears a needle has been placed, and they will hear weird, disorienting sounds in that ear while they see photic stimulation to drive the brain into a brainwave pattern with a pulsing light at a certain frequency not unlike the goggles that are now available through Sharper Image and some of those kinds of stores. Then, after a suitable period when they’re in a certain brainwave state, they will begin programming, programming oriented to self-destruction and debasement of the person.

In a patient at this point in time about eight years old who has gone through a great deal early programming took place on a military installation. That’s not uncommon. I’ve treated and been involved with cases who are part of this original mind-control project as well as having their programming on military reservations in many cases. We find a lot of connections with the CIA. This patient now was in a Cult school, a private Cult school where several of these sessions occurred a week. 

She would go into a room, get all hooked up. They would do all of these sorts of things. When she was in the proper altered state, now they were no longer having to monitor it with electroencephalographs, she also had already had placed on her electrodes, one in the vagina, for example, four on the head. Sometimes they’ll be on other parts of the body. They will then begin and they would say to her, "You are angry with someone in the group." She’d say, "No, I’m not" and they’d violently shock her. They would say the same thing until she complied and didn’t make any negative response. 

Then they would continue. "And because you are angry with someone in the group," or "When you are angry with someone in the group, you will hurt yourself. Do you understand?" She said, "No" and they shocked her. They repeated again, "Do you understand?" "Well, yes, but I don’t want to." Shock her again until they get compliance. Then they keep adding to it. "And you will hurt yourself by cutting yourself. Do you understand?" Maybe she’d say yes, but they might say, "We don’t believe you" and shock her anyway. "Go back and go over it again." They would continue in this sort of fashion. She said typically it seemed as though they’d go about thirty minutes, take a break for a smoke or something, come back. They may review what they’d done and stopped or they might review what they’d done and go on to new material. She said the sessions might go half an hour, they might go three hours. She estimated three times a week. 

Programming under the influence of drugs in a certain brainwave state and with these noises in one ear and them speaking in the other ear, usually the left ear, associated with right hemisphere non-dominant brain functioning, and with them talking, therefore, and requiring intense concentration, intense focusing. Because often they’ll have to memorize and say certain things back, word-perfect, to avoid punishment, shock, and other kinds of things that are occurring. This is basically how a lot of programming goes on. 

Some of it’ll also use other typical brainwashing kinds of techniques. There will be very standardized types of hypnotic things done at times. There’ll be sensory deprivation which we know increases suggestibility in anyone. Total sensory deprivation, suggestibility has significantly increased, from the research. It’s not uncommon for them to use a great deal of that, including formal sensory- deprivation chambers before they do certain of these things.

Dutroux X Dossier

reddit |  "Marc Dutroux (born 6 November 1956) is a Belgian serial killer and child molester, convicted of having kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls from 1995 to 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was also convicted of having killed a suspected former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, later proved insane. He was arrested in 1996, four years after the disappearance of his victims had begun, and has been in prison ever since, though he briefly escaped in April 1998.

Dutroux's widely publicised trial took place in 2004. A number of shortcomings in the Dutroux investigation caused widespread discontent in Belgium with the country's criminal justice system, and the ensuing scandal was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of Belgium's law enforcement agencies."

There were many many extremely disturbing things about his trial;

"On the witness stand, Jean-Marc Connerotte (fr), the original judge of the case, broke down in tears when he described "the bullet-proof vehicles and armed guards needed to protect him against the shadowy figures determined to stop the full truth coming out. Never before in Belgium has an investigating judge at the service of the king been subjected to such pressure. We were told by police that [murder] contracts had been taken out against the magistrates." Connerotte testified that the investigation was seriously hampered by protection of suspects by people in the government. "Rarely has so much energy been spent opposing an inquiry," he said. He believed that the Mafia had taken control of the case."

Dutroux himself claimed that;

"There is a well-grounded [paedophile] ring," he said. "I maintained regular contact with people in this ring. However, the law does not want to investigate this lead."

Recently in my home country(The United Kingdom) there has been a lot of news surrounding underground paedophile rings.;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10942375/Launch-formal-investigation-into-the-lost-paedophile-dossier-says-former-DPP.html

Quite a few MPs(conveniently deceased) as well as one MI5 agent have been indicated as involved.

wikileaks forum |  WikiLeaks in 2009 published a File called "Dutroux dossier summary, written down in 1235 pages, from the year 2005"

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Belgium:_Dutroux_dossier_summary,_1235_pages,_2005

We started to translate this File into english (it is written down in French),
to get the most possible impact into this children trafficing ring and the people behind the case.

You will find soon here the first sites that hass been tanslated and we will release every page, one by one, until this document is fully public.

Available to everyone in the world and every one visits the Wikileaks Forum.

police officer = policy overseer: fundamentalism in police operations

counterpunch |  The police are a more powerful political organization than civilian government. Second, there exists in police departments a culture of separation, insulation, and violence that is different from the culture of civil society. The fact that modern police evolved from the slave patrols gives us a hint of what that difference might be (Cf. Kristian Williams, Our Enemies in Blue).

Universally, police departments distance themselves from civil society, and operate according to their own rules. These include racial profiling, an assumption of command over civilians that is comparable to the military, an insistence on immediate obedience, and the autonomous formation of a database on civilians on the basis of which to decide what offenses to charge a person. [Cf. Victor Rios, “Punished”] By means of this self-generated database, the police can claim that everything they do is based on hard evidence. But it is self-generated evidence. It is used to render civil society an “other” upon which the police can impose themselves with impunity. Through their demand for obedience, they have the ability to criminalize at will, a power which gets transformed into an ability to identify those who are the “enemy.”

If civil society stands in potential opposition to the culture of policing, it is because it is thrust into opposition by that impunity. To walk away, to say no, to question, to argue with what a cop has ordered one to do is to become a criminal, to be handcuffed and arrested if not shot. This happens most often to people of color, but not always. The social doctrine by which the police promulgate this cultural difference, this identification of enemies within society, is by proclaiming that all enemies of the police are also enemies of civil society.

It is almost as if they were operating as a fundamentalist sect within secular society, a sect that says, either you are for us or against us. It is in religious fundamentalism that we find a strong confluence of separation from society, a self-determination of universal truth allied with an assumed purety of thought, producing an insistence on living according to rules and ethics strongly at variance (if not antithetical) to those of surrounding society. Let us look at an example more closely, in light of this possibility.

people taking it upon themselves to get rid of nottingham

WBRZ | BATON ROUGE - Police have closed streets between Baton Rouge Police Headquarters and I-12 where law enforcement officers have been shot.

Sources say two Baton Rouge Police officers and one East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office deputy are dead following the shooting. Another officer was critically injured. EBRSO confirmed multiple officers from both BRPD and EBRSO sustained injuries in the shooting and were taken to area hospitals. There is no word yet on the extent of all of the injuries.

A witness told WBRZ News 2, a man was dressed in black with his face covered shooting indiscriminately when he walked out between a convenience store and car wash across from Hammond Air Plaza. Shots were fired around 9 a.m. Sunday. The exact location of the business where the shooting took place has yet to be released.

A very large manhunt began immediately with officers hurrying to contain the scene.

breaking away is the only viable option...,

churchandstate |  Many of us who have been paying attention to the state of the world over the last half century have now begun to realize with growing horror that the progressive deterioration we have been tracking shows no signs of resolution. In fact, to some of us it looks as though there is no way to resolve this deepening crisis. The end of the track is in sight. The planetary factory is in flames, and all the exit doors are barred.

Proposed technical solutions are utterly inadequate to the scale of the problem. Many ideas like geoengineering will simply make matters worse. There is no political constituency for degrowth – none at all. There is precious little political support for even putting a light foot on the brake. This road to Hell has been paved with the very best of intentions – giving our children a better life stands near the top of the list – but here we are nonetheless. The climate is signalling that our future may be a little warmer than we were expecting, once our seven-billion-passenger train passes those gates.

Now that the denouement is in sight, I’m setting aside the anger and outrage, the blame and shame, to focus my attention instead on why this outcome seems to have been utterly inevitable and unstoppable.

Why has this happened? I don’t buy the traditional “broken morality” or “flawed genetics” arguments. After all, our genetics seemed to be perfectly appropriate for a million years, and the elements of morality that some of us see as sub-optimal (the greed and shortsightedness) have been with us to varying degrees since before the days of Australopithecus. I don’t think it’s just a mistake on our part or a bug in the program – it appears to be a part of the program of life itself. It looks to me as though much deeper forces have been at work throughout human history, and have shaped this outcome.

The main difficulty I have with all the technical, political, economic and social reform proposals I’ve seen is that they run counter to some very deep-seated aspects of human behavior and decision-making. Mainly, they assume that human intelligence and analytical ability control our behavior, and from what I’ve seen, that’s simply not true. In fact it’s untrue to such an extent that I don’t even think it’s a “human” issue per se.

I have come to think that most of our collective choices and actions are shaped by physical forces so deep that they can’t even be called “genetic”. I haven’t written anything definitive about this yet, but the conclusion I have come to in the last six months is that a physical principle called the “Maximum Entropy Production Principle”, which is closely related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, actually underlies the structure of life itself. Its operation has shaped the energy-seeking, replicative behavior of everything from bacteria to humans. All our intelligence does is makes its operation more effective.

some reflections on the twilight of the oil age - part 2.

cassandralegacy |  Let’s acknowledge it, the situation we are in, as depicted summarily in Part 1, is complex.  As many commentators like to state, there is still plenty of oil, coal, and gas left "in the ground".  Since 2014, debates have been raging, concerning the assumed “oil glut”, concerning how low oil prices may go down, how high prices may rebound as demand possibly picks up and the “glut” vanishes, and, in the face of all this, what may or may not happen regarding “renewables”.  However, in my view, the situation is not impossible to analyse rigorously, away from what may appear as common sense but that may not withstand scrutiny.  For example, Part 1 data have indicated,that most of what’s left in terms of fossil fuels is likely to stay where it is, underground, without this requiring the implementation of  difficult to agree upon resource management policies, simply because this is what thermodynamics dictates.

We can now venture a little bit further if we keep firmly in mind that the globalised industrial world (GIW), and by extension all of us, do not “live” on fossil resources but on net energy delivered by the global energy system; and if we also keep in mind that, in this matter, oil-derived transport fuels are the key since, without them, none of the other fossil and nuclear resources can be mobilised and the GIW itself can’t function.

In my experience, most often, when faced with such a broad spectrum of conflicting views, especially involving matters pertaining to physics and the social sciences, the lack of agreement is indicative that the core questions are not well formulated.  Physicist David Bohm liked to stress: “In scientific enquiries, a crucial step is to ask the right question.  Indeed each question contains presuppositions, largely implicit.  If these presuppositions are wrong or confused, the question itself is wrong, in the sense that to try to answer it has no meaning.  One has thus to enquire into the appropriateness of the question.”

Here it is important, in terms of system analysis, to differentiate between the global energy industry (say, GEI) and the GIW. The GEI bears the brunt of thermodynamics directly, and within the GEI, the oil industry (OI) is key since, as seen in Part 1, it is the first to reach the thermodynamics limit of resource extraction and, since it conditions the viability of the GEI’s other components – in their present state and within the remaining timeframe, they can’t survive the OI’s eventual collapse.  On the other hand, the GIW is impacted by thermodynamic decline with a lag, in the main because it is buffered by debt – so that by the time the impact of the thermodynamic collapse of the OI becomes undeniable it’s too late to do much about it.

At the micro level, debt can be "good" - e.g. a company borrows to expand and then reimburses its debt, etc…  At the macro level, it can be, and has now become, lethal, as the global debt can no longer be reimbursed (I estimate the energy equivalent of current global debt, from states, businesses, and households to be in the order of some 10,700EJ, while current world energy use is in the order of 554EJ; it is no longer doable to “mind the gap”).

some reflections on the twilight of the oil age - part 1.

cassandralegacy |  Since at least the end of 2014 there has been increasing confusions about oil prices, whether so-called “Peak Oil” has already happened, or will happen in the future and when, matters of EROI (or EROEI) values for current energy sources and for alternatives, climate change and the phantasmatic 2^oC warming limit, and concerning the feasibility of shifting rapidly to renewables or sustainable sources of energy supply.  Overall, it matters a great deal whether a reasonable time horizon to act is say 50 years, i.e. in the main the troubles that we are contemplating are taking place way past 2050, or if we are already in deep trouble and the timeframe to try and extricate ourselves is some 10 years. Answering this kind of question requires paying close attention to system boundary definitions and scrutinising all matters taken for granted.

It took over 50 years for climatologists to be heard and for politicians to reach the Paris Agreement re climate change (CC) at the close of the COP21, late last year.  As you no doubt can gather from the title, I am of the view that we do not have 50 years to agonise about oil.  In the three sections of this post I will first briefly take stock of where we are oil wise; I will then consider how this situation calls upon us to do our utter best to extricate ourselves from the current prevailing confusion and think straight about our predicament; and in the third part I will offer a few considerations concerning the near term, the next ten years – how to approach it, what cannot work and what may work, and the urgency to act, without delay.

peasants incensed by the head negroe-whisperer in charge's scripted rorschachian funk-faking...,

theroot |  Thursday’s ABC town hall with President Barack Obama was anticipated with bated breath.

Many were looking forward to an honest conversation about race and about the current tensions between the black community and police officers in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the attack in Dallas that left five officers dead.

Unfortunately, many activists left disappointed, even angry, at what they witnessed and heard.

Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who died after being choked by New York City police in 2014, stormed out of the taping of the town hall, saying that she had been “railroaded” by the network, denied the opportunity to ask the president a question, something she said she had been promised.

Garner said she felt that she had been “used for ratings,” and a few activists in the room agreed that the event seemed to be manipulative.

“It felt manipulative and disingenuous, and if we’re really trying to have a town hall about race in this country, it’s going to have to look much more like a truth-and-reconciliation process. It can’t be an hour and 15 minutes with the president taking up the most space, with people asking what he thinks of things instead of demanding that he do things,” Patrisse Kahn-Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, told The Root Friday.

“The town hall was clearly a curated event for ABC to quell protesters and organizers. It had nothing to do with actual future for black people, and I think that for us, we want to push POTUS in his last few months as the president to take executive action, to defund law-enforcement agencies that have consistently violated the civil and human rights of black people,” she added.

Pastor Traci Blackmon of the Christ the King United Church of Christ, and the acting executive minister of justice and witness of the United Church of Christ, wrote an extensive Facebook post after the town hall, describing her own disappointment.

lil'pookie gushing about Granny Goodness' newly-nuanced negroe-whispering...,

WaPo |  Clinton has been talking about how to “pull us together” on the campaign trail consistently since February. Her knowing, empathetic message that attracted African American voters during the primaries has remained consistent. But her words have gained more power and urgency in the wake of the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by police and the murders of Lorne Ahrens, Michael J. Smith, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa and Brent Thompson in Dallas.

During a speech at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem on Feb. 16, Clinton did something no white politician running for president had ever done to my memory: talked about the responsibility white Americans had in bridging racial divides. “White Americans need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers that you face every day,” the former New York Senator told the mostly African American audience. “We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility, rather than assume that our experiences are everyone’s experiences.”

In the midst of national grief, when both sides of the criminal justice debate felt justifiably aggrieved, Clinton repeated that call to empathy in an even more powerful address to the African Methodist Episcopal Church National Convention in Philadelphia last Friday.

Ending the systemic racism that plagues our country – and rebuilding our communities where the police and citizens all see themselves as being on the same side – will require contributions from all of us.  White Americans need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk – talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day.  We need to try, as best we can, to walk in one another’s shoes – to imagine what it would be like if people followed us around stores, or locked their car doors when we walked past. Or if every time our children went to play in the park, or went for a ride, or just to the store to buy iced tea and Skittles, we said a prayer –‘Please, God – please, God – don’t let anything happen to my baby.’ 

And let’s put ourselves in the shoes of police officers, kissing their kids and spouses goodbye every day and heading off to a dangerous job we need them to do.  When gunfire broke out yesterday night, and everyone ran to safety, the police officers ran the other way – into the gunfire. That’s the kind of courage our police and first responders show every single day somewhere across America.  

Clinton returned to these themes on Wednesday, in Springfield, Ill., in an effort to show that all of the concerns roiled by the bloody events of last week are valid.

“Now I understand that just saying these things together may upset some people. I’m talking about police reform just a few days after a horrific attack on police officers. I’m talking about courageous, honorable police officers just a few days after officer-involved shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota. I’m bringing up guns in a country where just talking about comprehensive background checks and getting assault weapons off our streets gets you demonized,” she said then. “But all these things can be true at the same time.”

gestapo america

strategic-culture |  FBI Director James Comey got Hillary off the hook but wants to put you on it. He is pushing hard for warrantless access to all of your Internet activity.

Comey, who would have fit in perfectly with Hitler’s Gestapo, tells Congress that the United States is not safe unless the FBI knows when every American goes online, to whom they are sending emails and from whom they are receiving emails, and knows every website visited by every American.

In other words, Comey wants to render null and void the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution and completely destroy your privacy rights.

The reason Washington wants to know everything about everyone is so that Washington can embarrass, blackmail, and frame on felony charges patriots who stand up in defense of the US Constitution and the rule of law, and dissidents who criticize Washington’s illegal wars, reckless foreign policies, and oppression of American citizens.

Washington’s demand for power has nothing to do with our security. It has to do with destroying the security that the US Constitution gives us.

The security that Comey wants to protect is not our security or the national security of the United States. Comey’s intent is to make Washington secure despite its violations of statutory law and the US Constitution. The way Comey intends to do this is by intimidating, harassing, and arresting Washington’s critics.

Comey wants the unconstitutional power to demand from the providers of telephone and Internet services all records and information about you. These demands are not to be subject to oversight by courts, and the communication companies that serve you are prohibited from telling you that all of your information has been given to the FBI.

The Man gettin real tired of you peasants and your pesky smartphone cameras....,

theatlantic |  Even in the Photoshop age, photos and videos can win the public’s trust in a way that a story or an eyewitness account can’t. More than 500 people have been shot and killed by police so far this year, but it’s those whose final encounters with police were caught on tape—and occasionally their photographers—who go on to occupy national headlines. As my colleague Rob points out, for Americans whose experiences with police are generally characterized by respect and civility, there’s something fundamentally unsettling to seeing, with their own eyes, an officer commit an extraordinary act of violence.

Cheap smartphones with cameras have brought the power take documentary evidence to just about anyone, and the credibility of phone-shot video has held up in court and in the news. But a patent awarded to Apple last month hints at a future where invisible signals could alter the images that smartphone cameras capture—or even disable smartphone cameras entirely.

Apple filed for the patent in 2011, proposing a smartphone camera that could respond to data streams encoded in invisible infrared signals. The signals could display additional information on the phone’s screen: If a user points his or her camera at a museum exhibit, for example, a transmitter placed nearby could tell the phone to show information about the object in the viewfinder.

A different type of data stream, however, could prevent the phone from recording at all. Apple’s patent also proposes using infrared rays to force iPhone cameras to shut off at concerts, where video, photo, and audio recording is often prohibited. Yes, smartphones are the scourge of the modern concert, but using remote camera-blocking technology to curb their use opens up a dangerous potential for abuse.