Just a heads up for any who read this blog - beware of taking heart from the recent spate of presumably good economic news. As you know we had a dot.com bubble, and then a housing bubble, which itself was inside a giant finance bubble. The Lords of Finance have kept the press focused on the housing bubble (always they talk about this problem as rooted in the sub-prime mortgage markets cheating), and even though many are aware of the finance bubble and the criminal activity there, the Central Banks have chosen to act in ways that totally ignore that (the rich still get richer in the finance markets and we wouldn't want to burst their happy little bubble now would we).

The result of the activity of the Central Banks is to vastly increase the size of the finance bubble (way too much liquidity in terms of loose fake debt-capital all meant to preserve the finance banks and hedge funds from their own folly). What this leads to is more or less a certainty that when the finance bubble bursts, it will collapse must faster and more out of control (as it must, which George Soros has been predicting several times now - he knows it has to burst, its just difficult to figure out exactly when).

You see the Central Banks had a choice here, which was to step into the anarchy of the high finance and derivative markets and insist on some discipline and sanity, or just leave the predators and pirates free to continue to economically plunder and rape and pillage the rest of us some more; and, of course, since they all go to the same private clubs and play on the same golf courses, Central Bankers really just work for the super-duper rich as fake debt-money (capital) caddies, so we really have no reason to expect anything else from them.

Got your year's supply of food and water in storage yet?

Okay, enough is enough. Give it a break already. Let's be clear about the illogical nature of this kind of statement - the antisemitic card that is constantly played by many supporters of Israel's policies and practices.

This is always done for only one real reason, and on an emotional level is something that most people learned to leave aside once they had left the 6th grade. Name calling is not an argument!

In fact it is evidence that there is no argument possible to the criticism it seeks to turn away, whether the criticism is overt or implied. One who resorts to name calling essential concedes that they have no counter-argument to the criticism. So instead of actually dealing with the issue of whether the criticism is apt or accurate, they try to attack the character of the speaker or writer, as if a weak character (which everyone has) has any relationship to the truth of the criticism. It doesn't take a lot of brain cells to recognize school yard name calling for what it is, and the people that use it need to mature, and actually begin to address criticism on the ground it is actually made. Name calling is the prelude to school yard pushing and shoving, and that then is the last step before a fight. The pugnacious character of the name caller is revealed then right in the beginning. They'd rather pick a fight than have rational discourse and peace, which in the case of Israel creates dangers to the whole world.

This is not to say Israel is the only place which harbors such juvenile behaviors, for Bush and Chaney show the same immaturity. This would be alright if this posturing would just end up in a fight between those who push and shove, but here we get into something far more dangerous, because such personalities have come to hold a lot of power in a world which far more needs peacemakers than it does children who want to play at war.

*Aikido - a Japanese marital art, sometimes called "the Way of unifying (with) life energy", or "the Way of harmonious spirit".

When something is falling down, do you stand in its way and risk it crushing you, or do you move in such a way, through such an art of dance, that you move around and through its fall, taking in fact from the energy of the fall that which enhances your own life energy and harmonious spirit? Right now a lot of Progressive activity involves trying to stand in the way of something quite gargantuan that is falling down right on top of us.

There's a better way.

What I call elsewhere, The Lords of Finance, have tried to run the world for their own selfish benefit for several generations now. As a consequence, instead of being Stewards of the Earth, they raped and pillaged. Not only that, they corrupted governments (the source of most social order) everywhere, so that these governments have lost the ability to be of real service to the people. Between Katrina and the lame responses of the Democrat controlled Congress, we ought to need no more proof that government is actually incapable of doing what we need for it to do.

Yet sadly, we are addicted to the proposition that the big father in Washington (something the Native Americas came to realize to their horror is actually a fake) will solve our problems and take care of us. The truth is that all the promises of politicians are empty rhetoric, and have no real meaning. The worst ones are actually the apparent progressives, such as Bill Clinton was, and Barack Obama now wants to be. They sell hope, believing (apparently) that they can deliver on those promises.

Now this would work if the object of that hope was to be ourselves, and if their leadership was directed at enabling us to begin to carry what government no longer is capable of achieving. Tragically, they want us to still believe in the central government in Washington. There is nothing rational in such a belief, nothing!

In order to move forward, we have to first enter into dialog with each other. Anywhere that can happen, anywhere that people will get together and ask themselves what can they do that is helpful to each other, while civilization is falling down around our ears, something quite precious will be born - a real government of the people, by the people and for the people. Instead of expecting this to come from the top down, from Washington outward into the periphery of the Nation, we give birth to it from the bottom up, out of the social commons, out of that same periphery.

Instead of being powerless supplicants, we take all power to ourselves.

At the same time, we can recognize that we are already doing this! If we look at all kinds of local community activities, this very process of relying on each other instead of on some fantasy father in Washington is unfolding. The processes out of which folk wisdom arises even gave birth to the fundamental principle several years ago: Think Globally, Act Locally.

Here is the link to wikipedia on the origin of the phrase.

Of course, as with all true folk wisdom, it is totally irrelevant who gets credit for it. These kinds of things just appear, sometimes in several places at once (e.g. "what goes around, comes around"). The reason they get repeated is because we find them apt to the situation in which we apply them.

If there is a problem it is that we haven't quite got up to speed on what needs to be done, because so many are still addicted to the fake father in Washington. Progressives who lobby there all need to join a twelve step group. The fact is (and this is a principle of all psychological aikido) that when you oppose something, you actually support not only it, but the process which engendered it. People really just need to leave Washington alone, and let it collapse back into the swamp it once was. There is too much to do locally to still spend time trying to get a bunch of already lost people to do something they should have figured out how to do all on our own.

The very fact of our pushing against them, empowers their resistance. Just think of the school yard. Where do you think the phrase "push comes to shove" comes from? I push you, you shove back. We pressure Congress, they acquire more strength to resist. So instead, we just walk away, and get on with figuring out what to do for and with each other at a local level, where our first initial assumption is that whatever comes down the line, not only is the fake father in Washington not going to help, he is far more likely to come down on us with more force because his corrupt agenda is totally antagonistic to our real needs.

Time to really wake up folks. Go rent and watch the movie the Big Chill. Its a cold and cruel world out there, and the best friends we've got are right in front of us in our families and local communities. Cultivate those relationships, help them grow and get stronger. Think about the big bad that might come, and make plans with others.

There's a lot of yuck going to hit the fan folks. Katrina was just the beginning, and remember Katrina wasn't just nature acting out - it was first and foremost a complete demonstration that government is not our friend anymore, not the federal government, not the state government and not the local government. You think the people hurt by the recent fires in California were helped by government? Didn't happen. People helped each other, and the politicians just went along for the ride and took the credit.

Think Globally. Have a wide and varied view, one that is more synthesis than analysis. Then, on the basis of that understanding - Act Locally. Be hard to find wiser words for our time.

This is a question being asked a lot these days, because there is the President dancing and smiling and joking, while the economic news grows worse everyday, the war lingers on and just about every measure of the real state of American life is on a down turn (unless you are rich). So, why is he smiling?

The answer is really simple, so simple in fact that its obvious. However, it is also dangerous and scary, so dangerous and scary that no one really wants to utter the truth. Well, on this blog that's what we're about: the truth.

THE PRESIDENT IS ON DRUGS!!!

There, I've said it. Happy now?

Here in New Hampshire we have gone over the 2nd deepest recorded snow level ever and with two months of potential snow left (it can snow in April), we just might set a new record (we have over 100 inches so far and the people with snow plows are running out of places to put it, because up here it tends not to melt. If it fell in November, its likely still be on the ground in April.

Some people are suggesting that this cold long snowy winter runs contrary to the possibility of global warming. If its getting warmer because of human activity, why then is this Winter worse?

Well, the problem here isn't with the weather, but with the thinking. For example, people with an agenda and an already given point of view will takes whatever facts are at hand and make them fit their theory - that is their thinking is reasoning to a foregone conclusion. Most people don't think carefully about this problem anyway. Politicians like to have opinions, and anyone can find a scientist to support their ideology (as long as we keep in mind an ideology is a fixed system of ideas that looks to find facts consistent with it, much the same way people can find in the Bible just about anything to support totally different points of view.

Here's some help. Climate is a consequence of a very complex system of interrelated natural phenomena, including what human beings do that might effect it. If we just study the generally observable laws of complex systems themselves, we find that they have a tendency to a steady state, but on occasion will change to a new steady state. When they do undergo such a change, the whole system often oscillates wildly for a time, before the new steady state emerges.

What this means is that climate change isn't going to happen in a nice linear fashion, getting steadily warmer every year, but rather it appears as if human activity has so stressed the whole system that it has reached the point where it has to make an adjustment to compensate for the effect of our activity. Making this balancing adjustment, means all kinds of parts of the whole have to find a new harmonic relationship with each other, and so we get the wild oscillations. Weather gets more and more weird because the out of balance condition doesn't go immediately to a new steady state - there are too many individual adjustments that have to be made as part of the process.

So a cold winter that seems to press the extremes is just a part of the necessary wild oscillations the whole system has to go through on its way to a new steady state. All the recent weather phenomena really only tell us is that the interim period of wild oscillations is at hand, but it doesn't tell us where the new steady state is going to end up. The same is true about the excessive warming. Its just another wild oscillation. We could just as much be approaching a new (hopefully small) ice age, as we could have melting polar ice raising sea levels and drowning all kinds of cities at the coasts.

It ought to be clear, however, that human activity is affecting the system, and that we need to be far wiser about that then we presently are. If history tells us anything, however, it tells us that civilizations don't bother to be wise, for too many of those in power (making macro-decisions) only care about their more immediate short term goals. What this means is that ordinary people who want to survive or be a part of a community that wants to survive whatever the new steady state is, had better start thinking about that survival, and not expect an institution to take care of us. That's the lesson of Katrina - we are on our own, and its time to wake up and do what is necessary as individuals and small groups.

Trying to push Washington into action is really a waste of effort. Might was well try to move the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River to Atlanta for the water. In fact, and tragically, we can't save everyone, because a lot of ordinary people are just as short sighted as people in power. Actually, if one looks around carefully, you can already see a lot of people taking care of business on this level. Civilization is sinking into chaos folks, time to make the right kind of plans to ride it out.

In this blog I have been delaying saying anything much about the housing crisis (I also moved across the USA from Northern California to the New England, so my life was quite disrupted for many weeks). The truth is, of course, that every time we read in the press or hear on the news these words: the housing crisis, we are being told a lie. What we have instead is criminal activity at the highest levels of the finance industry. That's right folks, crimes were committed, and the so-called housing bubble is a consequence of these crimes.

Economic crimes, by their nature, produce economic wounds. The rape and beating of a human being, wounds and perhaps kills that human being. The rape and beating of an economy wounds and perhaps kills that economy. Such a crime - an economic crime - can have millions of victims, and as long as the press fails to recognize the crime involved, the people never really understand what has actually happened. For those who may not have been paying much attention, here is a bit of a summary of the nature of the crime.

As the Republicans, in the latter days of the 20th Century, more and more deregulated everything in sight, the higher levels of the world of finance became increasing free of any oversight at all. We have for some time now been experiencing the political terrorism that comes from an out of control religious fundamentalism; and, now we are going to experience the economic terrorism that comes from an out of control economic fundamentalism - the religious-like fantasy called: the free market.

Banks, stock markets, the Federal Reserve and now Hedge Funds have become a place where a kind of economic anarchy is fostered. Few or no rules restrain the natural appetites of human beings (for greed, for power etc.) in these venues, and it is in effect (in these near invisible realms of finance) a war zone. Companies eat other companies. Large investors create rumors that cause the markets to make predictable (and therefore highly profitable) panic moves. The Fed, for example, was asked (more than ten years ago now) by Congress to oversee these developments and decided instead to be as much hands off as possible.

To appreciate the truly outrageous character of this, we also have to realize that under present banking rules, when the Fed lends money, it is just creating play money - nothing economically real is being put into the stream of finance. So as the Fed pumped money into the economy (via easy credit - all those loans ordinary people were taking out to buy houses they couldn't actually afford), the whole thing was just so much hot air. Hedge fund managers, private finance banks, and stock market owners, saw here a great opportunity. Easy credit was something of which a clever person could take advantage. The way to do this was a kind of three shells and a pea game, using financial instruments (derivatives) that are as economically meaningless as the fake money put out by the Fed. As a result a giant ponzi scheme was put in place. A ponzi scheme is a fraud where promises are made to investors of incredible rates of return, that only works because the newest investors' money is used to pay the earlier ones their promised return. As long as there are new investors things go well, the scam artist takes his profit off the top, and the new guys (without knowing it) pay the first investors, who then run around exclaiming what a cool deal they just made (sucking in more new investors).

The particular derivative used was for the issuing mortgage company (the place financing the poor smuck who bought the house he couldn't afford) to sell bundles of these mortgages to the next level of financing above the originating lender. So these bundles of mortgages became a second (or derivative) financial instrument. In our insane economic anarchy (unregulated free market finance), such instruments then become something that is bought and sold in a market.

To make this even more confusing, bundles of mortgages where themselves bundled, and another level of the ponzi pyramid came into being. These too created a market. Okay, take a deep breath now, because we are going to plunge into the real swamp next.

Follow the money. The Fed eases credit, which is soaked up by the speculation in the housing markets. Housing prices go up (inflate, because that is what easing credit with fake money does - it causes inflation). The excess of liquidity created (too much cash), attracts predators at the bottom - the sub-prime lenders. Through lies and fast talk, these bottom feeding aluminum siding types suck in credulous home buyers, with no-down offers, no credit checks and no proof anywhere that the loans can be repaid. These mortgages are worthless going out the gate.

Up they go then into the derivative markets as bundles and bundles of bundles, where (because the feeding frenzy of the easy credit is inflating housing values) all this looks like a really good deal. The buyers and sellers of these derivative instruments don't really care about the underlying value, because they make their money in the markets for these instruments. As the inflation of housing increases, these all too fake instruments seem more and more edible to the higher flying predators in the finance and hedge fund industries.

The easy credit provided by the Fed is also made available to those financial banks which loan money to the buyers and sellers of these instruments, so another infusion of fake money enters the ponzi pyramid at the upper level. Now these dudes are really sharp, okay. I mean seriously sharp and clever. What happens next is actually amazing, and because no one is watching, it all goes awry right in the beginning. Hedge funds start playing heavily in these markets, for a lot of money is being made (skimmed off is a more accurate phrase). Hedge fund managers take a lot off the top before they pay off their investors (its a kind of mini-ponzi inside a larger ponzi). The big institutional lenders (such as Citibank and Morgan Stanley) actually get together (I think there were four of them altogether) and form a conspiracy. Collectively these guys agree to enter into the topmost level of the pyramid (the hedge funds) and invest huge portions of their own capital in an effort to corner the market there.

Remember, buying and selling all these derivative instruments (bundles of bundles and hedge fund stocks as well as the really weird futures market instruments in these same so-called securities) allows the players to make lots and lots of money. Hedge fund managers were fast making millions and the big institutional lenders were making billions. How is this happening? Where is the wealth coming from?

Well it isn't real in the first place. The easy credit provided by the Fed at multiple levels in this ponzi pyramid inflates all the values (inflation on top of inflation). Yet, right at the beginning there is the mortgage, remember that? As the money is fed into the pyramid by the Fed (what a pun that is!?!), something is left behind: debt. Those who are borrowing the fake money at any level in the scheme are also obligated to pay something back to the lending institution. But the craziness got so out of hand, that as the bundles were bundled, no one bothered to make sure who actually owned the debt at the bottom. Some homeowners, who are the original victims of this criminal activity, are finding that in court they can challenge the foreclosure, because the institution seeking to foreclose can't actually prove it owns that particular and individual mortgage.

All of this is why what is falsely called the sub-prime lending or housing crisis is not actually causing all this trouble at the top of the pyramid. The big four thieves ended up holding hedge fund securities and other instruments that didn't have any value at all (the value was never there in the first place, but during the led up to this situation no one (well almost no one, we'll get to that next) gave a damn. All this money was being made personally by hedge fund managers, finance house managers, stock holders in these companies etc. As long as the Fed was making easy credit (inflated inflation), the fake wealth could go in the private bank accounts of the faceless players. They were happy.

To top it off, as the institutional corporations started having to write off all these valueless instruments from their balance sheets, the managers (even if let go) were walking off with golden parachutes (in the tens of millions of dollars). Of course, the value of the stocks of these companies declined, some rather rapidly. And here we get to the even higher levels of this criminal enterprise.

There are people who are actually smarter then those who believe they are more clever than the other guy. A few people actually understand that the Fed creates fake money, and what the consequences eventually will have to be of this infusing of vast amounts of fake money into all these markets, from the bottom of the pyramid to the top. When the bubble bursts (as burst it must because it is all just so much hot air), all sorts of stock companies are going to see the prices of their stocks fall, some quite far. This doesn't mean by the way that the company is valueless, but it does mean that for a time the company can be bought on the cheap.

This previously happened on the cusp of what we remember as the Great Depression. The truly smart ones watched the market speculators steadily inflate values out of control, and then when the false values fell, as they must, perhaps even below their true value, this is the time to buy. So we see this now, except instead of just involving the United States the situation has far wider dimensions. We live now in a global economy, and as these American financial institutions fail, whose managers risked their whole company in order to make short term individual financial gain during the time of the rising bubble, they are now for sale cheap. In come the international smart ones, from China and India, and the oil rich middle-east.

America is having a corporate fire sale!

Meanwhile life goes on at the bottom, such as it is. People lose their homes. People lose their jobs. Families come under increased stress. Local governments can't cope with the increase in need for social services. Nor can the private institutions, such as the Churches. Those who caused and profit from this criminal collapse of the American Economy bear none of the suffering. They aren't even called before the bar of justice. The press will continue to treat the original borrower as the one at fault, for (let us never forget) the corporations control the media.

Welcome to another giant step in the descent of the lives of ordinary Americans into conditions that will be not unlike those in the third world. Of course, if we don't sleep through this, we'll learn how through changing the underlying culture (and processes of education) how to ride out this crisis and become stronger. Those at the top can eat each other all they want, especially if those of us at the bottom begin to realize that we don't have to act like competitors in a jungle of survival of the fittest. With a change in the culture (in the stories we tell each other of what this all means), we can learn to cooperate and survive together. What is only an appearance of descent in terms of material circumstances can be change into a spiritual/moral ascent in terms of how we treat each other.

Let the corporations collapse. We can build tight communities instead. We don't need them remember, they need us. Without mindless drone workers and consumers, the consumption culture fails.

We don't need fake money from the Fed. We can have local currencies and barter systems instead. We don't need senseless media exploited culture (fake artists), we can have local musicians and singers instead.

We don't need state run schools training us to be drones, we can have real schools and real education all on our own. The mothers and the fathers and the teachers are the ground from which are grown any real culture or civilization. Let us revere them instead of fake celebrities, and fake sports figures and fake politicians and fake corporate leaders, and fake religious leaders. Do I need to say more? Are you getting the point? I sure hope so.

I've been watching the movie Primary Colors (if you don't know it, check it out), and it did make me ask a question about this blog. Do I have anything more to say than to describe what is going wrong?

So I thought that I would take this blog in a new direction for a while, and write as if I was running for President (everyone else is). I've done this before, but in this instance I am going to have to deal with the present yuck factor of the way the world is. I'm mean really, can we actually do anything to fix the horrible messes piling up on this political highway? When I look at all the wrong things going on, I feel like I'm in a slow motion interstate accident involving 6000 cars, 18,000 trucks and not only is the fog thicker than pea soup (the number of lies and disinformation out there makes reality nearly invisible), but most of the drivers can't look up from their television sets long enough to see the plain as day road signs, shinning right through the soup, that proclaims in bright red letters ten miles high that right around the corner The Bridge Is Out!

In certain respects, most the news is bad. Between corporate agribusiness and our corrupt politicians, the food supply actually doesn't feed us real food. Most people's appetites have been trained to want red meat, as in greasy fast food. This is so in the West, and now is being exported to China and India. We've known since the 1960's that beef production requires maybe as much as 10 lbs of vegetable protein be feed to the cattle in order to create 1 lb of beef protein. This is plainly some kind of insanity, is it not?

A look at most of our current social problems and political crises reveals a similar absence of logic and reason, either in the behavior of large corporate institutions and/or the policies of governments. If we survey this rather odd situation (the absence of reason), we can come to two conclusions.

One conclusion is that reason is in fact present, but that its orientation is that wide social benefit is not the logical basis for the decisions, but rather that the reasoning behind the decisions that are being made is primarily directed at benefiting only a very few. The other conclusion is that because we can see the absence of reason when we approach the situation looking for something that benefits us all, we ourselves are making a mistake - we are not following out the facts to their logical conclusion.

Let's come at this from a slightly different direction, just to make this more explicit: 1) reason only appears to be absent because we have assumed that reason required the intention be to benefit us all; and, 2) the real absence of reason is among those of us who act as if the logic of the situation required something different as a result - we've not been reasonable, and it is our reason that is absent. The other guys are being very reasonable, they just don't care about the rest of us.

We live in a time in which the leading decision makers, both corporate and government policy, have had other agendas for many years, and their narrow view, which was quite self-centered, has now come to the foreseeable conclusion - everything is falling apart because it wasn't managed in the first place with any wisdom or grace.

Why is this important?

Well, one main reasons is that if we are deluding ourselves (by imagining that the world should operate at the level of reason we think right) then right away our picture of the world is in error. Now a lot of people recognize that self-centered decisions have been made and are being made, so that a lot of opposition has arisen directed toward the corrupted and selfish decision makers that have led the world into this train wreck. Here again we have to ask ourselves, whether we have not made further logical errors, in this case one of timeliness.

Do we have the time to fix what has been done wrong? Lets take global warming, as an example. Further lets assume that the facts are as thought - global warming exists and we need to do something. There are other questions. Does the political will exist to fix what needs to be fixed? Is it possible that, in combination with other escalating problems, we actually can't fix this approaching train wreck? Is it possible that so much has been so badly managed for the last couple hundred years, that the selfishness and corruption has created a situation that can't be turned toward the ideal so many want to imagine should be our direction?

Right now in America we have what some are calling a housing crisis, and huge increases in people having their homes foreclosed upon. If we read behind the scenes of this, we discover that the primary responsibility for this crisis was not in the predatory lending in the sub-prime markets, but in the financial markets where the faked up derivative instruments were created that made available to the sub-prime lenders the capital necessary pursue this dangerous course. If the loans had not been bundled in an effort by those financial markets to make speculative high risk loans through creating instruments nobody tried to figure out what their real value was, there would have been no crisis. If the government had tried to regulate this financial industry (as it was actually directed to both by the congress (who asked the Federal Reserve to act ten years ago) and by prudence, there would be no crisis in financial liquidity.

We just need to remember that as we gaze at the obvious problems, nobody who ought to be watching and regulating these problems for the benefit of all is actually doing that. Pick a problem and the changes necessary to fix it are so far down the line of actual political will that we are not being reasonable in expecting the train wreck to be avoidable. Need I say no one among the various civil society groups or liberal groups or even conservative groups wants to face this possibility.

At this point we are at more bad news, and certainly so far from what flavor of Kool Aid the Presidential candidates are selling that we must be on a different planet. In a sense, this Candidate's message is its time to recognize that things are going to fall further apart in a big way. Once we accept that, we can actually take hold of reality in a way that would enable us to do something.

Let me lay this out as a series of bullet points.

1) Things are worse than we think because they are acting in combination (not as single events). 2) Our ideal solutions for the individual problems aren't going to find a way to get done in this current climate of corporate self-serving intentions and political corruption. 3) Once we stop spending our energy trying to fix problems that can't be fixed, we can begin to fix problems that can be fixed. 4) The difficulty is learning to distinguish between the two before it is too late to act on the problems that can be acted upon. 5) If we learn to do this, we will discover that things are better than we think (acting creatively in combination in ways we don't yet observe).

Now we are getting to the actual good news! There are problems we can cooperate in solving that understand that the organization of the world is on an apparent line of descent (less seeming civilization, instead of endless further wonderful development). This presents us with the alternative seeing how not to be caught pulling against the flow of events (the apparent descent into an absence of coherent healthy political transformation, or technological fixes) - that is how to avoid trying to drive us stream. In order to understand this we then seek a workable picture of the actual way of things and work with that flow.

So as to save our collective time, here is the reality. Western Civilization is collapsing (civilizations do this kind of thing), and something new is being born (see my website Shapes in the Fire). That's why I wrote above about "apparent" descent. This process of changing civilizations should be called metamorphosis - caterpillar becoming butterfly. Really, this is good news. Imagine then, if you will, a Presidential candidate who actually understands what is going on in the world and wants to lead us through this rite of passage. Further, imagine that you don't have to elect him to office, because this kind of "leadership" is more like the work of a sage story teller than it is of holding and using power.

The power is the power of the word to express just those ideas that help us "see" what needs to be seen, and then where to apply our will in the most productive way, in flow with the real shape of events.

Some years ago Matt Drudge started a website. It became not only a phenomenon, but a significant feature in American Politics. Political candidates, and elected officials, after a time all had to take account of the Drudge Report. It even became a kind of art, trying to figure out how to get a favorable mention on Drudge, or how to avoid an unfavorable mention.

Now the interesting thing is the Drudge Report isn't a blog. Matt Drudge is not writing his views in prose, although his views do seem to determine the many links that can be found by going to this website. Because of the site's popularity, for example, many folks leak stories to Drudge, hoping he will post a link to another place that also has the leaked story. Yes, occasionally there is original "reporting" of these leaks on Drudge, but for the most part what one gets by going there is several dozen links to other kinds of media.

I have observed there some interesting characteristics. The obvious is that Drudge in general favors the political Right. Everyone knows this. You can also expect that if he doesn't like the person the link is about, the picture (when there is one) on the Drudge site will be unflattering.

Another characteristic is the phrase that forms the words behind which stands the link. This phrase is often itself spin, and frequently does not exactly represent the true character of the story you will read if you go to the linked page. This phrase (we might call it the Drudge Report headline) will offer something exciting, and often not really deliver on that implied promise.

To sum up: the Drudge Report, in that it is political in nature, is quite subtly (and sometimes more obviously) biased toward the political Right.

But that is not why I go there.

Drudge also runs stories whose substance is more in the character of the bizarre. If there is a weirdness out there, Drudge will have a link to a story about it. Wife kills husband with cat, and so forth. How he gets these links is anyone's guess, but I think mostly the links get sent to him, and he has people working for him that process this material, and knowing his tastes then offer him choices. He probably makes the finally choices as to what to put up.

This, to me, is his genius, and that is why I call it: the Insanity Index. For example, today I read a headline link to a story about the white boys that were hurt in Jenna. They are suing the black boys that fought them, and the School Board. If you don't know this story, then put your blinders back on and go back to sleep.

Now I am not leaving politics out of the Insanity Index by the way. There is more social insanity there than other places. Most people take the stuff politicians say seriously, though. Me, I just shake my head, try not to puke or cry and watch them (the politicians) encourage the rest of us to burn down the world.

In November 2007, 455 million plus visits were logged for the Drudge Report. Now you know why I call my main website Shapes in the Fire.

These are the raw facts. The current administration is the most corrupt and criminal in American History. They have violated all possible trusts between a government and a People. They lie at every turn, and do whatever they damn well please. They have turned policy into a vehicle for enriching all their friends. While they appear to make mistakes, they actually don't really care to get anything right, for their real agenda is to so weaken America, that the American People will be powerless before the coming economic and environmental catastrophes. This administration serves the very very rich, and the very very rich intend to survive these catastrophes, while the rest of us will be left to sink into the pits of despair and hopelessness.

History is prologue some say. Katrina was the Overture for many coming years in which disaster will follow disaster, and the government will be less than useless, for its real agenda will be to serve wealth, not the People.

Everyone knows the Republican Party is lost, morally, intellectually and spiritually. The Democrats are no better, as a recent analysis of their debates has shown (no constitutional or systemic failures are discussed). The essential fabric of our Democratic Constitutional Republic is falling apart and the Democrats can't even effectively oppose a horribly wrong war, much less appreciate what has been destroyed as regards the rule of law.

Most progressives are no better, for such as MoveOn still try to lobby the Legislative Branch, when anyone not entirely asleep realizes that this part of our government is, and has been, completely compromised and made ineffective for decades in the sense of actually serving the public. Corporations rule through their K Street law firms and lobbyists, and the real needs of the People are the last thing on the agenda of the vast majority of politicians, national or local.

The Parties make choices to preserve their own status and powers, and none of these people actually risks anything serious in an effort to save the Republic.

The Press as well (the once called Fourth Estate) is wholly compromised and ineffective, giving us infotainment instead of the hard but necessary reality. They too take no risks.

Where are the true patriots? Where are those who ought to be saying in print and in action just what our Founders did when they signed the Declaration of Independence: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

We have forgotten what it cost those men. Several actually lost their lives in the Revolutionary War, and the Declaration itself was an act of treason against the English King. What they essentially refused to compromise, and we seem to have forgotten, was their honor. Where is honor today among our Citizens, in particular those who presume to lead and seek such offices as the Presidency?

Everyone (including the candidates for President*) is hiding under the bed whimpering, while the flood tide of corruption and destruction rises to sweep away the most Noble Experiment in Government ever attempted.

*Kucinich and Paul seem to be exceptions, but they are not effective leaders, while Gore (not running) goes to the White House this week and does not have the courage to call President Bush publicly to task to his face in front of the cameras (something Pelosi should have done as soon as she was made Speaker of the House). Its all just politics as usual. It scares me to think what catastrophe will have to befall us before these less than honorable seekers of public office finally give voice to the truth. Sadly, I fear it will then be too late.

Well, the Lords of Finance and their servant politicians are at it again. Last week (mid-November, 2007), some of you will recall that a leading British government official put in place two major changes to processes by which the English civilian population would be controlled.

First it was announced that anyone leaving England had to go through a check point where they would be required to divulge 53 pieces of information to officials. This information would be put in a permanent data base. Then it was announced that the government was authorizing local police forces to be able to search without a warrant any "suspicious" people boarding or exiting commuter trains and buses or any other kind of public transit. All of these controls adding to British being the most watched (more government video surveillance) populace on the planet.

As the uproar started to escalate, guess what? It then was announced that financial information on 11 million families (on two DVD discs) had been lost. Opps!

What a marvelous way to distract everyone from more and more Big Brother in action. Of course, two days after this diversion was created, it was hinted that maybe just maybe the discs had been merely misplaced and could soon be found (an intensive search was underway).

In order to appreciate this we have to understand what politicians and their masters call the "news cycle". They know that news stories come and go, and that if you have a dangerous story going into the "cycle" the best way to kill it is to create a distraction. So while the smoke and mirrors of modern politics in Britain is just beginning to notice the latest Big Brother social control anti-freedom initiative, then is put in place a really stupid distracting story, and the "news cycle" moves on to the next thing.

We see this also in America, where all kinds of stories drive the Iraq war from everyone's attention. First it was a lot of scary stuff about Iran, and now it is a complete meltdown in a small aspect of the world of finance. In fact it is beginning to look like the Lords of Finance have a whole string of distracting things coming down the line just so they can slip in more and more social control measures without the "news cycle" paying too much attention.

Why are they doing this?

Because the world is really falling in the toilet, and the Lords' plan is fairly simple. They plan to end up on top, while the middle class disappears and most of the Western democracies get thirdworlded (like that new verb?). That's right folks, welcome to the 21st Century and the consciously created culling of the herd. You see, from the Lords point of view, if they can create a big die-back in world population (without killing themselves in the process), then there is plenty of oil and other energy resources, because there are less and less (as time goes on) people wanting (and able) to purchase the consumer goods previously used to make certain people filthy rich.

Anyway, social control mechanisms are crucial to the Lords as they ride the chaos that is coming. They are going to have to jail all kinds of leaders among the poor and near poor as things get tougher. If you have the balls to check out the future, rent a DVD of City of Men. The why of the thirdworlding of Britain in this film is a fiction, but the nature of social life 20 years down the line is not.

Its also why the USA built several "castles" (permanent military bases) in Iraq. As the world goes in the toilet, the new private armies (remember Blackwater?) will have a place to hang out from which they can control the whole region (the plans include creating as much chaos in the region as possible, so that the ones with the best military toys win - that is end up able to control the oil).

Don't even ask me about the plans for a world-wide small pox epidemic - you really don't want to know.