Genuine Protest

Posted on October 16, 2011 by ehurst

I contend the OWS does have a sliver of truth.
If we accept the broad general meaning of the protests, and keep in mind the original call which went out a few months ago, we realize this general anger at the wealthy is partially justified. That is, the mess we are in is the result of policy choices which were proposed and lobbied by a collection of major trans-national corporations. These wealthy corporate types most assuredly do push policy objectives which line their pockets and destroy life for the rest of us. It’s a fact.
Let’s pick out just a few of these Shadow Government folks. You are aware our warfare, now in some eight countries in Africa and the Middle East, is a direct result of the original policy paper from the Brookings Institute, Which Path to Persia? You can learn more about that here. Lots of links and images to help you grasp the picture. But I’ll summarize.
If you read that whole ghastly Brookings paper, you’ll realize it details a list of countries they want us to invade, and subtly explains the reasons. You’ll realize our foreign policy reflects exactly what Brookings wants us to do. In a very real sense, the Brookings Institute is our real government, at least on that particular range of issues. Take a look at some of the graphics, particularly the one showing some of their corporate sponsors. You’ll note some of those are in turn fronts for even more corporate donors.
Indirectly, those corporate sponsors are running our foreign policy. All the more so when officers from those corporations serve on the Board of Directors at Brookings. It’s not like some blindly selected, good feeling charitable giving. These CEOs and such really do want us sending troops and equipment to break things and kill people in those countries. Further, there is no hesitation in arming and funding the very people our government claims are terrorists. It is these terrorists they are watching for, officially, while putting us through the ringer here at home.
A very significant part of your misery comes from the likes of Coca Cola, and it’s not by accident. I doubt it’s possible to boycott everyone who is involved in our Shadow Government. You’d have to stop living, because that degree of separation wasn’t even available to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, in his remote cabin. Between them these corporations own most of what you touch on any given day, and most of what touches you. But obviously the executives at Coke do not love you, and have zero interest in your welfare.
I’m not a big fan of Tony Cartalucci and his Land Destroyer blog; I simply read it for the facts. He promotes a form of political activism which will not work, because it presumes the system can be reformed. It seems odd to me he is so very aware of how thoroughly the Shadow Government owns the system from top to bottom, yet expects it to yield to an outcry from voters. Fat chance of that; we are the only real enemy they have.
You’ll have to come up with something better than that, if you want to have any impact at all. By now most of my regular readers know I honestly believe praying and calling for repentance is the only answer, and that it requires the power of God to fix these things. The only demonstrations and sign waving I might consider is calling folks to repent because America is under God’s wrath. At this point, I am utterly certain we are doomed, politically and socially, to a period of hard tribulation. Still, you really need to approach this from your own point of view. But the facts of the Shadow Government are not in dispute.

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Just in Case: Caveat

Posted on October 15, 2011 by ehurst

Let’s pretend for a moment, in some future events, my prophetic announcements about war with Iran turn out to be inaccurate. Under the Laws of Moses, you should stone me, since I dared to declare, “Thus saith the Lord.” Besides being out of physical reach, I do have one valid defense. I’m not a liar, but a nut.
You can go back into literary history quite some ways and find it has always been in vogue to claim a certain degree of madness. It’s a way of distinguishing oneself from the crowd, in part because it implies one does not see reality quite the same as everyone else. In human society, we judge someone not quite sane if their version of what’s real varies too much in one way or another from any recognizable thread of common thinking. The claim to be “crazy” becomes synonymous with brave and artistic rejection for something better, and implies the cutting edge of a new trend.
Other terms have also been hijacked: disturbed, insane, etc. But the clinical definition of “psychosis” is someone whose grip on reality is simply too far off what’s typical to even consider it trendy. We might imagine degrees, and whether or not there is a perception of danger of very real harm arising from the psychosis, and we might even discuss why there is this radical departure from perceptional norms. Still, the clinical side of the question offers a rather limited range for debate. When we label someone clinically psychotic, few would argue.
In may case, it really does not matter I am consciously aware of the wide gap between what is manifestly so and what I must pursue. It’s not literal voices inside my head; that’s only a figure of speech for the internal dialog all healthy humans engage. The fully conscious human mind is normally a place of conflicting demands from various threads of the self. One of my internal voices demands things which are obviously not connected with what actually happens. It happens to be the voice I cannot ignore. Doing so would be genuinely self-destructive, not to mention a threat to others.
So for me to assume the posture which is least harmful, I must listen to that one unrealistic voice which causes me to say and do things which can’t be true. Sorry about that, but you’ll have to resolve your madness your own way; this is my way. What I write here will most certainly be affected by that psychotic voice in my head. That has no bearing on my intelligence or talent (such as it is), so it may be I can still entertain you. And perhaps some of my brain spew here does approach reality as you know it, so that you can benefit from comparing notes. Glad I could help. As for the crazy stuff, you’ll just have to put up with it, because it’s all in the same package.
(Note: This works the same if you simply don’t happen to believe any part of my religion.)

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False Economies

Posted on October 15, 2011 by ehurst

We’ve seen where hidden economies contribute to our actual production, but aren’t counted officially. Now we’ll discuss fake economies which are counted, but produce nothing.
A basic principle: Shuffling money and information is not production. Government also produces nothing we can measure economically, unless you want to count things like the Misery Factor. We can presume government enables a certain measure of economic growth, but that only counts when you have good government. At this point, we have had so much bad government, for such a long time, we probably wouldn’t recognize good government. So we don’t consider it.
There is so much bogus activity counted:

We get these GDP numbers. But then we find that GDP includes things like the cost of litigation, medical care, and an entire list of things that are not really productive — things that don’t create wealth. For a number of years I had speculated that if one only counted real, productive economic activity, then the economy of China was probably pretty close to that of the US.

Get your head around this: In any productive economy, up to now nothing can replace copper. Anything which might do the same job does it less efficiently for the price. If it does better, it also costs a whole lot more. When you watch the amount of copper consumed by an economic system, compared to the reported system production, you get a clear indication of how fake the reports are.

The decline in metal consumption is a direct measure of the decline of real wealth. Yes, real wealth is not dollars, it is oil; it is copper; it steel. As long as the per capita availability of these resources is increasing, our wealth is increasing. I have argued in the past that the suppression management of commodity prices is largely responsible for comparatively recent declines in their per capita availability….
A tonne of copper can’t be consumed until it is produced. But the government can spend money that it doesn’t have. So government spending can’t be part of what was produced by a country unless it has been covered by taxation — then at least the wealth was produced prior to consumption. If the spending is empowered by debt creation, then no production was involved.

When we read stuff like this, we instantly recognize it as truth. The measure of wealth is not the wealth itself. What most economists and business folks refuse to recognize is the basic truth that credit and debt is essentially immoral in itself. God’s Laws are not simply some primitive, harsh rule making for the sake of control. In our secular world today we consistently prove it’s accuracy.
The Laws of God say loans inside an economic system must be without interest. The whole objective was not about growing wealth, but helping people over a hump. Even with the wisest planning, some folks simply fall into economic tight spots and may not survive. So the whole point is not business, but human survival. While the Law of Moses permits loans for business purposes, charging interest is a sin. This should discourage loans outside the family. You had better not be thinking about charging interest to your relatives, but God wants us to think of our non-related community members as family-in-effect. People matter more than simply prosperity in itself, because the only reason to seek prosperity is for the sake of people.
Every business which attempts to grow by taking out loans is going to charge more than they would otherwise. Is that not obvious? The Bible views this as gouging. Yet the Western Merchant Civilization considers it a simple cost of doing business, because it values wealth above human life. If you have to raise prices on your goods because it’s necessary in paying off those loans, then you are denying access to those who can’t meet your new, higher prices. This whole business of accelerated growth of economic activity misses the whole point, according to God’s Laws.
It’s a big ugly canard to insist some market goods could not be supplied without borrowing to get the business going. Your calculation leaves God out of the loop. If He says He wants things a certain way, it doesn’t matter what the results are when you transgress those guidelines — it won’t be good, and He won’t bless it. It will, by definition, be destructive. The issue is not what our feeble human intellect can measure, but what God says is optimal. It’s the old argument of rejecting revelation because the human mind arrogantly insists it is capable of understanding the universe. The very notion itself is proof of man’s fallen nature, because that is the very flaw which is symbolized by the Genesis account of the Fall. Whatever else all that symbolism says, it amounts to the act of placing the intellect in the executive, for which the intellect is simply not capable. The intellect cannot possibly perceive the mystical moral fabric in the universe. Transgressing the Laws of God is harmful to human life, period.
But you may not have to buy all that to look back over the results of what we have and see that, given human nature as it is, not as we wish it, economic growth using debt will always turn out bad. In this case, the bad is a handful of plutocrats using the system to eventually plunder everyone else. In this case, the particular mechanism is a mixture of mass deception (the lie of our official GDP) while disenfranchising everyone who isn’t a member of the plutocrats. It’s fascism — economic profits privatized, economic losses funded by taxation.

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Fools Rush In

Posted on October 14, 2011 by ehurst

I really didn’t think it would come this soon. And it may not, but for all I and thousands of others can tell, it’s going to happen before the end of the month. Maybe any day now. Despite the utter transparency of the fraud, this stupid claim of a planned assassination of the Saudi ambassador by some loser who happens to hold an Iranian passport (and an American one) is being made an excuse for giving Israel the green light to bomb Iran. As always, consider the source, but realize there are many sources far more credible saying the same thing.
Yet, at the same time, I’m surprised it took this long (notice the date).

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Counterfeit Religion: NAR

Posted on October 13, 2011 by ehurst

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) — look it up with your favorite search engine.

You’ll get lots of names, places, organizations. It’s big and growing fast, with money pouring into by the truckload every day. If there is any religion today threatening humanity, this is probably it. I’ll give you a clue: They think God votes Republican, which in reality plays out to Fascism. Worse, it has one foot deep into blasphemy.

You can read all you like, but the best way to spot a counterfeit is to have a sure knowledge of the real thing. I’ll raise a few issues of the real deal so you’ll understand why NAR is fake.

Jesus never had any interest in politics, aside from knowing enough to avoid getting involved. Granted, everyone involved in politics will interpret a genuine Christian faith as a political statement, but they would do that with a drop of bird splat. Jesus said His Kingdom was not of this world, and His disciples would not be involved in changing the political situation. If politics need to change, we leave that in God’s hands, because we have too many otherworldly concerns to occupy our time.

Christians are looking to escape this world, not fix it. Of course, true religion is taking care of widows and orphans, and anyone else who suffers in some way, powerless against a broken world. That’s because the message is our sacrificial love, a willingness — nay, an eagerness — to lay down one’s life for the sake of the message. And if that means dying from a thousand voluntary cuts to our own welfare, fine.

That business of being a “victorious overcomer” is a reference to conquering one’s own personal demons. God may choose to extend His hand to perform signs and wonders, and may grant some of us a limited authority to direct that power, but only because we have demonstrated to His satisfaction a certain level of commitment. That’s the meaning of that fancy word, “faith.” We are committed to tossing aside all our worldly concerns, and though we hardly expect to succeed against our own fallen flesh every time, we are committed and ready to keep trying until we die. We overcome death by facing it head on, and passing through it to the other side. No miracle from God is granted based merely on human need, but upon some revelatory need to express a higher truth, to correct some spiritual injustice.

There is nothing wrong with using the term “apostle” to describe an office assumed by some human person at any point in human history, and on into the future. That’s because the term is synonymous with “missionary.” It implies a certain amount of authority over those who respond to the missionary efforts, but even Paul considered himself accountable to those who sent him. We all recognize we are ultimately accountable to God, but we also know He works through other people as surely as He does us. It’s not about rank, but role. Paul said he would rather lose his influence over someone if it meant they went out and preached the gospel.

There are also prophets throughout human history. In broad terms there are two types, with a lot of overlap, because it’s all by the same Holy Spirit. There are prophets under the Laws of God, such as yours truly. There are also prophets who receive a particular spiritual gift, considered part of the so-called charismatic gifts. The difference is the internal process involved, and a broad difference in how the ministry operates. Neither of them says anything contrary to what is well established in Scripture. Everything is merely an application or contextual refinement arising from deep and ineffable truth. No prophet today will add to Scripture.

Scripture is a Hebrew document, even the part written by the Gentile, Luke. It’s based on a Hebrew intellectual world view, which happens to be distinctly mystical. The logic is symbolic, and the language is largely parabolic. It is not analytical in logic, and not often literal in expression. If you start from the Hebrew assumptions, the literal portions will become obvious. To assume a literalistic rendering of clearly symbolic language is asking for trouble.

Real religion is a matter of tagging alongside while God does the real work. Teaching faith is not about talent or charisma. Paul was notoriously untalented as a public speaker, yet so very effective because he didn’t rely on his personal abilities. The message carries its own power. It also does not depend on money, because God supplies by free will, voluntary offerings. If people won’t ante up, that’s their problem. God’s work gets done regardless of any human agency, but He surely prefers to use all the servants He can get.

If/when we have a national government dominated by Republicans, we will have to contend with the very real threat from this NAR stuff. And you thought the Spanish Inquisition was rough.

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Hidden Economies

Posted on October 13, 2011 by ehurst

You may be aware of the concept of unofficial economic activity, that which isn’t calculated into the formulas because it’s illegal, black market, or in some other way underground and unreported. There are some good estimates and some bad ones, and it’s hard to know just how much of the actual economic activity is off-the-books.
I’ve said before the coming economic collapse won’t stop TPTB. First, most of them have skimmed off huge amounts of productivity and socked it away somewhere. They won’t be broke. On top of that, however much unofficial economic activity may be going on, here in the US much of it is actually the work of the CIA and other clandestine agencies. Ever hear of Iran-Contra?
That was the nasty bit of work where the CIA was trading arms secretly with Iran to buy back some hostages. The money for the trade came from arms and drug smuggling between the US and the Contra Guerrillas in Nicaragua. More than one exposé has been published showing the CIA has long been involved in drug smuggling. The job of the DEA is to keep the competition under control so the CIA has a free and open market, but somebody forget to explain that to the DEA. That’s why the CIA bombed that Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, because a relatively honest DEA agent on that plane had the goods on CIA drug smuggling in the Middle East.
One of the best books explaining how our foreign policy blunders were almost entirely the result of CIA drug trafficking is The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy. Virtually the entire mess of the Vietnam War was all about keeping the Asian heroin supply in the hands of the CIA, or at least a sizable portion of the profits. It also explains almost all the MIAs and POWs we left behind there. They almost surely knew about this nasty business, and would have spilled the beans back here in the US. It was cheaper than assassinating them.
Perhaps you can extrapolate quite sensibly from the Mena Incident and CIA smuggling of cocaine detailed in the book by Gary Webb, Dark Alliance, and why he was found assassinated, through the current troubles in Mexico with their drug cartels. DEA agents have been severely disciplined when they insisted on inspecting various mass cargo vehicles (such as rail cars) coming out of Mexico. About all they are permitted to catch are symbolic shipments and small timers competing with the CIA.
Do not make the mistake of thinking the worst activities of our government will be curtailed by an economic crash. You and I may well starve, but the CIA will continue as if nothing happened. If anything, their market will be improved and they can gouge the prices at will. And do you suppose one of the reasons we sent troops to Afghanistan was to set the farmers free to grow heroin, which the Taliban had not allowed? There are surely plenty of other reasons, but this one counts large in our policy planning.
I reiterate my conviction TPTB will always have enough money for whatever it is they wish to do. They own The Fed, all the largest banking and investment houses, everything on Wall Street that matters, control all the government agencies they need, and if they need money, it’s as simple as snapping their fingers. When the economy goes down, it will be our economy, not theirs. You shouldn’t imagine it would mean bringing the troops home or anything like that. All the wars, drugs, petroleum, and everything else they like will continue apace until something fundamental for them breaks.
That’s a little farther down the road, just yet.
Addenda: After posting this, I ran across an outstanding summary here at LRC Blog. If any of this post interests you, you’ll want to pursue the blog post at LRC and the links to more information to the primary actors in this nasty business of the narcotics ghost government.

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Futility, Says the Prophet

Posted on October 12, 2011 by ehurst

It’s not possible to be sure exactly what the facts are in some situations, even when you are there seeing it first hand.
For example, did you know the label “natural” on most foods has little resemblance to the meaning you and I would naturally assume? We think it means the only difference between the raw product and the stuff in the package is some basic physical handling. Something has been harvested, chopped, maybe dried, then mixed, and perhaps baked or boiled. Then it’s packaged and sold, right? Almost invariably, when you see that word “natural” as advertising on the package, it’s not even close to that definition. It’s just a sucker word, an outright lie, which is the the definition of “advertising.” You can find the label on food which has seen contact with toxic solvents, not to mention significant residues of pesticides and such. You can’t taste those toxins, but your body knows in the sense that stuff affects your health incrementally, and causes entirely unnatural medical problems and premature death. Yeah, “natural.”
The OWS protests have manifested in my area. I could take a 20 mile (32km) ride to Kerr Park in downtown OKC and find our local version of OWS. It’s pretty peaceful so far, and I’m sure it would be very interesting to meet some of the people involved. But I’m not going to go there. Much as I like what it represents, I doubt the majority of the participants really understand the dynamics of it all. Yes, many of them are seasoned veterans of various forms of political protest and activism, including a very high-powered lawyer helping lead the thing here in OKC. Still, I doubt they realize what is truly necessary here.
I’m guessing the OWS folks in Boston know. I confess I don’t have a solidly researched assessment at hand regarding the relative belligerence of the various major urban police departments, but I seem to recall the Boston PD has never shrunk from breaking their own laws. Seattle is notorious for it, too. Then again, the OKCPD has never hesitated, either, but you probably haven’t read much about their moral failures unless you are tuned into our local news. Even then, you have to read between the lines, because precious few reporters from any agency would dare to rat on the OKCPD with any reliability. Seems to me it’s partly that OKCPD has never faced something which really sells papers nationally. Whomever might be blogging about it gets little attention. Bloggers revealing the sins of Boston or Seattle are probably more numerous, and are certainly more famous. Their populations are much larger than OKC, but I imagine the real difference is we just don’t get much notice.
Besides, right now there is no conflict between our OWS crew and the police.
But a major issue is the effectiveness of the protest itself. Moral persuasion arising from activism is seldom of any significance. How badly the voting population dislikes something has no bearing on the matter. The whole nation despised TARP, saying quite loudly they didn’t want it, but it went through. I can recall the massive anger locally at Senator Henry Bellmon for signing the treaty which released US ownership of the Panama Canal, but that didn’t stop him. He faced recall, and still retained tremendous influence. Lots of things have happened like that, but the sheeple hardly did more than bleat impotently.
Other protests have been more effective, at least apparently. The sheeple lost interest in supporting the Vietnam War and it did have an effect on our involvement. The protests did make a difference. There are a lot of factors going into that, such as the timing of the whole thing, coinciding with a long planned major shift in our national social consciousness on a whole range of things. The very character of the US shifted dramatically during the two decades following WW2. Significant to me was how several Christian denominations were dragged kicking and screaming by a leadership coup from the pacifist side over to the pro-war side. At about the same time, Dispensationalism was taking over the same bunch of evangelical denominations. The two are obviously connected, and together paradoxically connected to the polarization arising from the rather effective antiwar protests.
It’s not the same world today. Moral persuasion is simply not possible, unless it doesn’t matter. So long as sheeple sentiment is unlikely to affect plutocrat activities, the protests are harmless and permitted. To be effective would require the sheeple being more afraid of the thing protested than the crushing hand of the plutocrats. What OWS is protesting is the plutocrats themselves, and their greedy actions in destroying what was once a pretty strong economy. That the banksters did destroy it is simply not in dispute. It’s a fact, and they did it intentionally, whatever may have been their reasoning behind it. They have no intention of repenting. In that sense, you can say the 1% are functionally psychopaths — completely devoid of any capacity for human feelings like compassion, empathy and guilt. Changing this situation would require something I don’t believe the protesters are willing to recognize consciously.
It would mean at the least a genuine revolution where the plutocrats lose all their powers and privileges. Because of the depth and breadth of their control over the levers of power, the means to project their power and will over the population, this would almost certainly require a massive human slaughter. But short of that, should the OWS protests manifest even the least manifestation of leverage to actually accomplish a genuine change, it is they who would be destroyed. The plutocrats, working through the various agencies they control, would not hesitate to slaughter the protesters, and even a large portion of the sheeple, if that’s what they felt was necessary to preserve their position.
For now, it’s enough to allow the police to rough them up, arrest them, etc. It’s not a simple formula, because some police departments, as noted, are more eager than others. Each city has its own unique atmosphere, and the protesters involved appear to have a different collective character in each city. But if the protesters are determined to effect a change, many of them will die in the process. Were that the only consideration, I’d be involved myself. However, I am utterly certain it won’t happen. That is, changing the system is a pipe dream, because the system simply is not vulnerable in any meaningful way to whatever the protests can possibly accomplish. Were their actions sufficient to stir a genuine revolt in the sheeple, the plutocrats would still win. We simply do not have what is necessary, regardless of how you approach it.
That’s not simply a tactical and strategic evaluation, either. It’s not the right time; the fruit is not ripe. Nor can it be harvested in this fashion. This will be a huge mess, and it may contribute to the final ripening, but I doubt it will do even that. Mostly it will serve only to prove how it’s not yet time. I most certainly am interested in seeing the current regime fall, and I do possess the intent to get involved in bringing it about, but not through any such means. There will be a massive loss of life, both in this and in the end itself, but I will not put my hand to causing it, much less participating directly. I serve a God who won’t permit it, and He has His own plans.
I don’t profess to know much about those plans, but I do understand them in the sense of how such things pass as a type. This thing will die by its own violence, consuming itself internally. The plutocrats will destroy themselves. These are just human beings, in some ways less than that, but for all their eminence, they are just people. They aren’t capable of calculating accurately everything that’s going to happen, much less control events. Smarter than most of us, they’ll take full advantage of mass human response and all the failures that entails. But they don’t see accurately their own failures. Whatever it is they think they are trying to gather and keep will simply flow through their fingers like sand. Without that stuff, they are actually more vulnerable than sheeple. They got into their positions by a powerful driving sense of insecurity, and that insecurity will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’ve rattled on long enough. Let me reiterate I have a prophetic assurance we Americans deserve this ruling regime, and we are forbidden to raise our hands against it. It is our punishment for the vast sins of our nation in essentially stealing everything we have and pretending we built it ourselves from nothing. We have trespassed and transgressed almost every other country on earth, used and abused them based on philosophical assumptions which arrogantly denied our culpability. So the police state oppression is the rod by which God will punish us. The punishment will stop when some critical mass of souls — He alone decides — have repented. Then He will break that rod. Things have been set in motion already, and the only few exemptions are for those individuals who repent now. All that means is God will reduce your personal share of the wrath due America as a whole.
This is what I plan to promote, support and how I’ll get involved; this is my activism. The shortest path to relief from the 1% is quite honestly breaking away from the system which put them in power, not by direct action to tear it down. It’s that old business of “serenity”: Don’t waste time bumping your head against a stone wall. Put your hands to things you can actually change.
Red pill or blue pill?

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Dunbar and the ANE Lifestyle

Posted on October 11, 2011 by ehurst

Sometime near the beginning of my clerical training in the 1970s, I learned a single pastor could be supported full time beginning around 50 members, and was pretty solid at 75. But as the congregation grew, he would not be able to lead effectively by himself when it got above 150 in regular attendance.
Sometime later, someone named Dunbar presented solid evidence this is wired into the human brain. A single human leader is unable to maintain sufficient emotional attachment to more than some number ranging between 100 – 230.
In Scripture, we see references to multi-generational households with a living grandfather as elder at about 50 people. This accounts for his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, married in folks, servants, etc. A larger clan household around 150 was the same bunch a couple of prosperous generations later, when the elder was not the literal grandfather, but the most competent leader of the eldest generation. The district of several villages and one big town was a tribe, around 1000 – 2000. Granted, at some point the designations stuck to the same group as it become much larger, so that a tribe might easily be over 100K. The terms were applied at the earliest point appropriate.
Compare this with the modern Western military infantry units. A platoon was maxed out at 50 (four squads of 11 each, plus support personnel and leaders) fully manned. A company was about 200 (three platoons plus), and a battalion neared 1000 (three maneuver companies, but other organic subunits, because many essential administrative and support functions are handled at the battalion level).
There is a reason for these breakpoints, and perceptive minds keep stumbling across them as the most effective breakpoints for handling large numbers of humans and keeping them organized for whatever purpose. Informal relations, a strong social bond of trust, with a single focus of leadership are possible up to the Dunbar Number. Beyond that requires greater formality with sub-leaders. As the size grows, the amount of specialization which necessitates adding support people rises exponentially. Small groups can handle everything internally and informally. Adding people to the same amount of space, or adding space to accommodate each successive level of size, both require adding extra bodies to maintain the minimal level of organization.
My blather about the tribal communal lifestyle isn’t totally blather.

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Election Grumbling

Posted on October 11, 2011 by ehurst

Part of me wonders if we will even have an election. It could easily be halted by a declaration of martial law. The probability of it grows incrementally every day. But just in case we do have an election, here are my crazy notions about it.
Democrats are really strange, but not quite stupid. There is a strong move to ask Obama to step down and let Hillary run, instead. Could happen, and she’d probably win. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure we won’t see Biden again. Some may breathe a sigh of relief, but you have to keep in mind, Obama-Biden has been about as harmless as we can hope. That should indicate how bad it really is, because it simply isn’t going to get any better.
I genuinely dread a Republican victory.
Romney is the anointed front-runner. He’s about as establishment as it gets for a non-banker. What hinders him is the Mormon affiliation. For all the silly noises in every direction, likely voters view Mormons as pagan cultists. Republicans pretend they are dominated by the Christian Right Wing, so it just doesn’t matter whatever else is going on, Romney ain’t happening.
Perry is just an aging rent-boy. His support for immigration grates on Republican nerves, but being from Texas, that’s where the money is. But honestly, all you need to really know about Perry is captured in merging his two primary college photos: one as a cheerleader, the other in that silly tall boots military cadet uniform. Merge them in the your mind … then remember he had really poor grades. He’s rather like Obama, an empty suit, a man for sale to the highest bidder, but a different flavor.
Cain is the rising challenger, and very likely to be the nominee. The main point is he’s not just a banker’s candidate, he is a banksta. He is one of those 1% who gambled all the deposits on mortgage swaps and other silly things, lost big, and applauded the plundering of the taxpayers to recoup. To him, the current banking mafia elite is the sacred temple of God and all else can go to Hell. Bonus points for being all black and all American, versus half-black and half-American like Obama.
As we all know, ghosts in the closet can change everything, just like musical chairs. Still, from what we now have, I am guessing we’ll have Cain for President unless Hillary is the opposition. The latter makes her husband look tame, and she won’t suddenly become regal and reasonable simply because she gains the throne. The bright side is our national policy misadventures won’t get any worse. That is, they’ll continue on the same path at the same rate. Cain is Babylon, pure and simple, a fascist dictator. He’ll accelerate the de facto martial law slavery to the military industrial complex, and is the kind to bomb Iran yesterday, and China next week.
Third Party? Not in Ameristan.
All of this because our voters are just that stupid. We deserve so very much the wrath of God.

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Silly Disputes over Jobs and Apple

Posted on October 10, 2011 by ehurst

Go ahead and use your favorite search engine. You’ll find many tributes to Steve Jobs, and a growing number of slams. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll see a somewhat finer division among the tributes. Most say he did big things. That is simply the facts. Then there are those who worship Jobs, if for no other reason than as a proxy for worshiping Apple/Mac products.
I’ve owned a Mac. I traded it off for something I wanted more. Having said that, I now expose myself to attack.
The academic discipline of Social Sciences presumes a fundamental notion: Humans in the aggregate display shared character traits which can be cited and explored. Thus, we can gain some insight into human behavior at large because, while no two individuals act exactly alike in every context, a great many together tend to act alike in certain key areas of life. We can theoretically group humans together in examine certain trends of human nature as a whole.
Over the past two decades, I’ve interacted with a lot of folks in the technology sector. There are trends you can detect, and I’m hardly the only one who might say the following. Linux fan boys (and fan girls) tend to be a little pushy, often crowing about the lack of viruses, for example. The sales pitch gets old when they insist on inserting it into conversations where it is frankly and factually irrelevant. Break down further into various distributions and Linux and you can really get some interesting traits. BSD fan boys are typically real SOBs, and it’s almost as if they hate humans to the same degree they love BSD. It’s reflected in what features will never exist — stuff most people like — in the various branches of the BSD operating systems. MS fans are smart alecks. All the more so because when their favorite stuff fails, they simply ignore all the failures and talk about something else. Oddly, though the vast majority of systems on the Internet run Windows, there aren’t that many real fans of Windows.
Then there are the Mac people. With a precious few exceptions, I have never encountered any Mac people who don’t worship their Macs and the Apple company. Literally. They act as if Apple is no less than the highest High Church, with a leadership whose very farts are each a divine revelation.
So if you dare to list the real facts about Steve Jobs, both good and bad, you’ll be shredded. Even the Zionist shills, who actually get paid for it, aren’t as ruthless and actively pursuing every obscure mention of their sacred cow like a Mac zealot. Indeed, you can’t refer to a Mac “fan boy” because none of them is less than a complete, berserker zealot. Because they were so unstintingly lavish in their worship of Jobs before his death, and even more so after, it could be said they fired the first shot. The Net was loaded with putrefying, sickly sweet articles, about how the world would have ground to a halt long ago were it not for Jobs and his immeasurable genius.
You don’t need to know what I think of Jobs and Apple and Macs. Just wait for it. There will be someone out there come and make ugly comments here and I’ll have to delete them. I cannot tell you how rabid and silly are the comments I’ve seen, with massive long threads, on other blogs whose authors don’t moderate, but do respond to comments. It’s like getting acid splashed in your eyes. It’s possible they might miss this post because they are too busy shredding the others, but I will be surprised if I don’t get at least one stupid comment.

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