Monday 23rd of December 2024

Virgil's legacy reinstated


Virgil's legacy

 

Masterminds and use of conflicts by insider traders
This is my opinion and I could be wrong...
The other day Phillip Adams’ column referred to Conspiracy Theorists (and aren’t we loopy beyond sanity)... So I wrote a short blog on that subject (Conspiracies greater than democracy?) that ended with a couple of words: “Annuit Coeptis" followed by a bit of extra guff.

I did not mention then, but hoped that someone would pick up on this and would mention the symbol that accompany these words — a truncated pyramid with a glowing eye inset in a triangle at the top of it ... These words and the pyramid are part of the design of the US dollar.. Have a look at a one dollar bill.

This interesting assemblage is the symbol of the reverse side of the “Great Seal”...
The way this symbol and these words came to be part of the seal and adorn the dollar-bill is well documented from its inception. The Latin motto “Annuit Coeptis” was suggested by Charles Thomson when he put together the final design for the reverse side of that Great Seal in June 1782:
A Pyramid unfinished. In the Zenith an Eye in a triangle surrounded with a glory proper. Over the Eye these words ‘Annuit Coeptis’.”
The motto can be traced back to the Roman poet Virgil who lived in the first century B.C. A line in his instructional manual for farmers — Georgics — says “Da facilem cursum, atque audacibus annue coeptis.” The U.S. State Department translation of “Annuit Coeptis” is: He (God) has favored our undertakings...

I would bluntly translate it as: Our Divine Might is Right
Below this pyramid is another motto: “Novus ordo seclorum”
The U.S. State Department translation is: “A new order of the ages”

This motto can translate in various similar ways and I would translate it bluntly as “New Order for Centuries to Come”.
BUT we are “assured” by the State Department that it was not intended to mean (nor does it correctly translate into) “new world order.” Seclorum is plural (new worlds order?). Thomson said the motto refers to the new American era beginning in 1776. Also, “new world order” is originally from England and the Latin translation would not be “novus ordo seclorum.”

On the front off the Great Seal something of interest should be also noted: ALL the casting dies of the seal show the eagle facing toward the olive branch. But on the Seal of the President, the eagle always looked the other way, until 1945.

With Little Bush at the helm of present aggressive US activities we could wonder about a few things... Has the eagle been looking away from the olive branch once more, for the President?... Is there something not-so sinister but secretive that we — the moron-toilers of ordinarydom —, of course, are not told?... Thus making it sinister in this context?
Is the “dumbest” President the US ever had, actually a very very smart “actor”, acting out — with cleverish devilish imbecilic bumblings to fool the populace — the wishes of a secret few? Or that of a secret one?
Now could we consider for a moment the existence of “secret societies” with secret secretive purposes...?
We cannot deny the existence of the Freemasonry — not so secret but secretive enough — and other not-so-secret societies like Opus Dei... But could there be out there some very secret societies that we would never have heard of, because of the very nature that these are very secret?
I am not talking of the Secret Lamp-post and Street-Sign Bending Society to which we all belonged during our misguided youth... I am talking of seriously secretive, very selective, very exclusive, very small, BUT very powerful secret societies.

Constructed in various small cells, independent of each other but related by their own Chief Grand Doodahs — who secretly assemble in a super-secret grand society. The Chief Grand Doodahs only know who the Grand Doodah of them all is... And the Grand Doodah of them all does not belong to any of the other societies but only the super secret grand society... and manages his own fortunemaking activities as a small shop front bazaar...?

From that very top, than pin head, that eye above the pyramid comes specific instructions to shape the world of humanity into a very specific construct despite its chaotic diverse nature, all in order to benefit all the members of the various secret societies — in general, without considering the cost to cultural integrity and personal detriment for the poorest of all. Charity might thus come handy to smooth the corners. Social justice and equality would not be favorable to the pyramidal structure.

These secret society members would also infiltrate and spy upon more open societies, like the Rotaries and the Apexes, in order to steer particular outcomes. Far fetched? Start thinking very carefully... Who would the members of these societies be? Mostly captains of industry, powerful lawyers, judges... but strangely enough also ordinary folks who wield a great “connecting” knowledge? How many? Very few in the top rung... Hey, I went to this funeral once — a neighbour, a nice enough bloke who moaned to me from time to time about his lawn being infested with some bugs I could not see... I got the shock of my life (his wife did too) when the tenebrous Catholic service was immediately followed inside that SAME church by a freemason ritual. We all just discovered that this “ordinary” fellow was the grand-master of a grand lodge...
So, if we accept there ARE secret societies that we do not know about, what are their purpose? To spend some evening time in funny dresses and aprons? To organise a piss up after a silent meeting to praise the existence of pigeons? Yep... you know what I mean...
Even our “democratically” elected governments — at State and Federal level — hide their grubby decisions behind secrecy, especially since there has been a blur between public and private enterprises... A new style cooperation in order to push public projects through without costing too much money except to the users... Devilish... They hide the contractual arrangements behind “confidentiality” or such items, like “national interest” not to say anything nor mention the “secret act” with tight lips and a wink of “greater knowledge”... It’s all a trick. Somewhere-someone-somehow is connected to the decision and will benefit from it:... Not just a new stupid tunnel with toll booths. Secrecy is the bane of Democracy.
There is no democracy with secrecy. But even when it appears that things are openly placed on the table, there are many hidden crucial small parts that also destroy the purpose and soul of our Democracy...
And we — of the unclean proletariat who believe in our democratic ideals and rights — we’ll go and place bunches of flowers at the feet of monuments erected to our dead, who in reality gave their lives to protect not ourselves, not our democracy, but the pyramidal secrecy that we do not know about. We are just pawn played out on their board, and our best chance of survival is to hide unless we do not mind being a pawn.

Most of the “commercial” media in its relationship with middle order secret organisations that makes it thrive will make sure that we do not wake up from our gentile torpor... The media will thus assure that people democratic power is expressed as if a reality — but not as the great manipulated illusion that it is. And even most political rulers will follow orders from “above”. Has the advisor community been also infiltrated on all sides to steer all political parties except the Greens towards the “great” outcome?

At the moment the rush to install draconian restrictive anti-terror laws throughout the world smell of the Grand Doodah and his acolytes realising that too much freedom is a bit too much — thus some realignment through “moralisationing” and fear needs to be done...

Johnnee? Following orders you may ask? No, it does not happen that way... His buttons are subtly pressed by greater con-artists than he is and he is too absorbed in his own importance to see the drama of the tricks. He is like the organ grinder’s monkey distracting us while the pickpocket in cohort is robbing us... You know the Peter principle... Johnnee will never be a Doodah but a tool for their focus.

Presently, it appears there is a strong push behind secret Doodah doors to “increase the tempo”, the words “freedom, democracy and rights” are thus used like rancid spread by media and rulers to butter our toasts of naive trust. These words are fouled when coming from the mouths of Bush, Blair and
Howard. But most of the masses feel that they have to take the bad taste... Anyway most people would not know the difference... They have been fed on junk food since childhood...

These three English speaking leaders have made a pact that, no matter what, they will stick together like glue in their grand deception of us all. And whenever we detect the deception, they have prepared “moral” excuses, “intelligence failures”, secret compartments so nothing can be traced back to them and a wad
of new deceptions ten paces ahead of us. They have their path mapped out by the Doodahs.
So, there was a letter in the SMH (3/11/05) referring to the Taliban being funded by the CIA, basically inferring that people like David Hick had been really funded by the CIA to to what they were supposed to do... That fact wont save him unless we can expose the trick the in full sun...

Until a certain point Osama had also been funded by the Yanks... via inflated petrol prices through oil “crisis”... Long winded derivative trail of money transfers...

True. But the wind has turned 180 degrees.
The saga of this amazing sorry chapter for those kept in Guantanamo is that there has also been a western world cultivated confusion between the Taliban and Osama, with the funding party (the CIA) knowing less and less what was happening to their moneys until September 11 2001. So indirectly the terrorists who flew planes into the trade center in New York may have been funded by the CIA, without its knowledge of course. This is why also the CIA was so quick at being able to point the finger at the culprits.
At the pressing insistence of a well-informed source, I will do what I usually do not, but exactly what the CIA and the ONA did with nonchalance, in order to facilitate their respective governments go to war in Iraq. I will use only this one single source of informative speculation. But unlike them I will use also concur with solid evidence and time lines that do make sense, not like the flimsy “evidences” that were manufactured in the secret printing rooms of the Pentagon.


History is full of holes and there are plenty of things that do not make sense. They go into a nebulous black hole of secrecy and coincidences... until a little thread emerges, like that I recently quoted from the New York Times in regard to an attack that did not happen in the Bay of Tonkin that precipitated the
Vietnam war escalation for Lyndon Johnson. Or that one with “Scooter” being sent to court, but who knows how far this will go...

In regard to the Taliban, we need to go back in time when the “first” major petrol crisis hit the world... OPEC tightened supplies in 1973... We could I suppose go as far back as Roman times, times from which I’d suspect the Doodahs think they go back too... but no, we’ll start in 1973. Nixon and Kissinger times...
Presently OPEC is made of several countries :
Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Venezuela (Chavez)... It was an organisation created at a Baghdad Conference from September 10 to 14, in 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. (Coincidence # 911 (9/11)? The five Founding Members were later joined by eight other Members.

According to OPEC’s own guff:
“OPEC’s main objective is to co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member Countries, in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers; an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations; and a fair return on capital to those investing in the industry.”
In short OPEC means price collusion, limited competition, controlled market and supplying a very rich cake to a very hungry western world. Some of the “private” beneficiaries of these arrangements are rich.... Mega rich.... So rich that their fortune can’t be fully assessed or comprehended.
(A friend sent me an animated presentation of the family home of Sheik Zayeb bin Sultan Al Nahyan comparing his palace the size of 100 Buckingham palaces to the price of the gallon of petrol at the pumps... But I digress.)


In the 1970s, OPEC Member Countries took control of their domestic petroleum industries and acquired a major say in the pricing of crude oil on world markets. There were two oil pricing crises, triggered by the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, but fed by fundamental
imbalances in the market; both resulted in oil prices rising steeply. Control of oil prices went through a few other hiccups here and there, then:
“A fourth pricing crisis was averted at the beginning of the decade [1990], on the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, when a sudden steep rise in prices on panic-stricken markets was moderated by output increases from OPEC Members. Prices then remained relatively stable until 1998, when there was a collapse, in the wake of the economic downturn in South-East Asia. Collective action by OPEC and some leading non-OPEC producers brought about a recovery. As the decade ended, there was a spate of mega-mergers among the major international oil companies in an industry that was experiencing major technological advances. For most of the 1990s, the ongoing international climate change negotiations threatened heavy decreases in future oil demand.”

One can smell the hand of the US telling the OPEC blokes to “cool it... We’re coming to the fore.”
Bah blah blah, etc etc....
Thus we can see from OPEC’s own admission the oil prices are not fully under the spell of supply and demand but under the willingness to supply, the ability to flood the market in a controlled manner, as well as being under the influence of the politics of the day...Furthermore, if supply contracts are properly observed, petroleum producer countries cannot, by international law, pump more than a certain percentage of their reserves per year but then the size and estimates of reserves can be and have been elastisized to suit...

Back to 1973.
For the anti-conspiracy theorists, they should go no further than this point and save their walking shoes.... It’s not going to be pretty. For those who know that there are many puppets on strings that are dangled in front of our eyes in order to make us swallow large bitter pills, come along. Some “historians” put the oil embargo as payback by the OPEC countries after the blatant support of Israel by the US when it was attacked by a few Arab countries. True, Israel could not have been so swift in its “victory” without an
enormous support from the US in logistics and equipment...

Extract:
“The 1973-74 War (The Yom Kippur War) During 1973 the Arab states, believing that their complaints against Israel were going unheeded (despite the mounting use by the Arabs of threats to cut off oil
supplies in an attempt to soften the pro-Israel stance of the United States), quietly prepared for war, led by Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat. On Oct. 6, 1973, the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur, a two-pronged assault on Israel was launched. Egyptian forces struck eastward across the Suez Canal and pushed the Israelis back, while the Syrians advanced from the north. Iraqi forces joined the war and, in addition, Syria received some support from Jordan, Libya, and the smaller Arab states. The attacks caught Israel off guard, and it was several days before the country was fully mobilized; Israel then forced the Syrians and
Egyptians back and, in the last hours of the war, established a salient on the west bank of the Suez Canal, but these advances were achieved at a high cost in soldiers and equipment.
Through U.S. and Soviet diplomatic pressures and the efforts of the United Nations, a tenuous cease-fire was implemented by Oct. 25. Israel and Egypt signed a cease-fire agreement in November, but Israeli-Syrian fighting continued until a cease-fire was negotiated in 1974. Largely as a result of the diplomatic
efforts of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Israel withdrew back across the Suez Canal and several miles inland from the east bank behind a UN supervised cease-fire zone. On the Syrian front too, Israeli territorial gains made in the war were given up.
After the war Egyptian and Syrian diplomatic relations with the United States, broken since the 1967 war, were resumed, and clearance of the Suez Canal began. The 1973-74 War brought about a major shift of power in the Middle East and ultimately led to the signing of the Camp David accords.”

__________________
But could there have been something more sinisterish in this whole shamoozle...
For example could Nixon and Kissinger have allowed the whole thing to develop in order to do a few cute things? They would have known of the concentrations of Arab armies, of the “threats” of petrol price hikes... etc... By  that time, Israel already had acquired nukes (“Nukular” programme started in
1963)... “In them days”, the US was only importing 20-25 per cent of its oil. Thus an embargo was only going to “relatively” hurt the US economy...
Europe on the other hand would suffer greatly... so let’s do some maths might have said a Yankee Doodah... So could there have been a secret push of events from the White House, not to stop the war before it started
a) to maintain the divide in the middle east thus “conquer” (economically), knowing the only outcome of the war (victory to Israel) since the US supplied stuff for it until it be won, even at a “cost”...
b) to supply Israel with the tools to defeat the Arabs for favours in return.
c) the loss would weaken the Arab influence in the world, including within their own countries. (Angry side effect here* vaguely considered then...)
d) But allowing (encouraging) the Arabs to “embargo” the oil to:
1) soften the loss of image and “allow” the Arab countries to show they still had some clout thus releasing a lot of steam from the result of that conflict in a region that could really catch on fire... Imagine nukes from Israel and the US poised versus the nukes of Russia... etc. (the “game” is thus played with risk
management)
2) stuff up Europe a little. Smile, you’re on candid camera...
3) make huge profit on the sale of whatever from oil.
e) replenish US stocks of armament in the process with better and sell the concept of nuke protection to the masses.
f) increase trade, sales and manufacturing level in the US.

At all steps, one has to realise “dues” are paid on profits and exchange rates. One can assume a three to four per cent trickle on all transactions using differential of exchange rates one way or the other, ebb or flow. That trickle is made of a basic ten per cent, less cost of fiddling the political/economic environment. On a one trillion economic fiddle, the end-trickle is about four billion... All this money moves through banks and privateers pockets, of which some may or may not be involved in the original plot that increased “trading” conditions.
But in this pretty flow of funds, it’s not all who profit. There are mega loser. It’s like a giant casino’s poker machines in which the wheels are spun and some of the punters lose their pants, while those who run the machines add to the loot. So while the sum total of gain amount to a mere 4 per cent in order to lure
players on the secret playgrounds although they are not in the “secret”, there is a lot more to be made than a mere 4 per cent. The price of war has for example lifted profits of a firm like Halliburton by 400 per cent in one year and the oil companies revenue are so obscene they are being investigated. Their profits are seen as amounting to “profiteering”... a vague concept in the vague laws of trade...
Even the four per cent fiddle was already a neat figure put forth in the days of Isaac Newton. Neat currency converting...

Extract:
“SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S STATE OF THE GOLD AND SILVER COIN. (25 Sept. 1717.)
MAY IT PLEASE YOR LORDPS
In obedience to yor Lordps. Order of Reference of Aug. 12 that I should lay before yor Lordps. a state of the Gold & Silver Coyns of this Kingdom in weight & fineness, & the value of gold in proportion to silver with my observations & opinion, & what method may be best for preventing the melting down of the silver coyn, I humbly represent that a pound weight Troy of Gold, eleven ounces fine & one ounce allay, is cut into 44 1/2 Guineas, & a pound weight of silver, 11 ounces, 2 pennyweight fine, & eighteen pennyweight allay is cut into 62 shillings, & according to this rate, a pound weight of fine gold is worth fifteen pounds weight six ounces seventeen pennyweight & five grains of fine silver, recconing a Guinea at 1£, 1s. 6d. in silver money. But silver in Bullion exportable is usually worth 2d. or 3d. per ounce more then in coyn. And if at a medium such bullion of Standard allay be valued at 5s. 41” 2d. per ounce, a pound weight of fine Gold will be worth but 14 lbs. wt., 11 oz. 12 dwt. 9 grs. of fine silver in bullion. And at this rate a guinea is worth but so much silver as would make 20s. 8d.”

_______________
Etc...
Why is this so important? Because, even then, the exchange rates between countries were such that the repayment of international debts could be subject to a bit of clever fiddling. To quote Newton again:
“For as often as men are necessitated to send away money for answering debts abroad, there will be a temptation to send away Silver rather then Gold, because of the profit which is almost 4 per cent. And for the same reason forreigners will chuse to send hither their gold rather then their Silver.
All which is most humbly submitted to yor Lordps. great wisdome.
I . NEWTON
21 1717.
MINT OFFICE”

__________________
But as important as it is, making megabucks is only a side issue. The aim of the game is to stay “in control”... Stay king of the secret castle so to speak... The ruler of humanity, not just a few million of people... So, came the other oil crisis attributed to the events in Iran, but had a side flowon to Afghanistan.


Quote from an English paper:
“Although the 1978 overturn [in Afghanistan] took the form of a Bonapartist coup, carried out without the direct participation of the masses, it nevertheless had a relatively progressive content. The young left wing army officers who had been educated in the Soviet Union compared the extreme backwardness of their own country to the situation in places like Tashkent in Uzbekistan — a modern city with a strong industrial base, an educated population, schools, universities and hospitals of European standards — and
drew the conclusion that the only way out of backwardness was through a nationalised planned economy.
The Afghan Stalinists who took power in 1978 did so without the knowledge or permission of the Moscow bureaucracy, which had excellent relations with the Daoud regime. Moscow wanted Afghanistan as a friendly buffer state and had no interest in changing the social relations there. They were even prepared to
sacrifice the Afghan Communists to Daoud’s executioners, if necessary in order to keep the status quo.
In my conversations [the writer’s] with the army officers who led the coup, and later became ministers in the Kabul government, they confirmed all of this, and also explained that they had opposed the Russian invasion in 1979, which they consider to have been disastrous for the revolution.”

_________________
Why then the US encouraged and paid the Taliban and the Mujehadeen who they knew — the US had to know — were ruthless gangsters, gangsters with no regard for women, who imprison them behind fortresses of un-education, repression and blue covers that even hid their eyes? WHY? Freedom fighters?
Bollocks! They were backwards repressive fighters. Why would the Americans thus supply these killers with money and latest weaponry? Only to stop the Russians expanding their influence?... The west
(US) knew the Russians were in Afghanistan reluctantly and, after a too long while, gave up... The ruskies were not defeated in battle but in spirit... They had their own problems at home also spurred by, I would suggest, US infiltration of their satellites republics... Reagan, another actor, spruiked very well for the
Grand Doodahs... in the destruction of Russia. I guess young Putin knows how the game is played...
The Taliban won and for the Americans, it was not such a sweet victory. Afghanistan went backwards at a thousand mile an hour loaded with weaponry to boot... All given by the US and paid for by secret CIA funds AND proceeds from inflated oil prices from Arab states since that “second oil crisis” who also supported the draconian regimes of the Taliban... Then came bin laden who saw through all this crap and may have seeked revenge... Revenge is not a very nice thing...

So now we are battening the hatches... A long passing unfortunate moment in which the grand Doodahs are still going to carry on doing what they’ve been doing for centuries... Make us toil for their benefits with a few comfortable crumbs for us so we don’t rebel. We nearly had it made! The information and Technological Age nearly gave us what we had been promised all along... We would have thus become useless to the masters. We would have known too much or decided not to do as much for them but do more for ourselves... But this is where the devil is always in the details. The new IR proposed laws are cleverly designed to force our nose back to the grindstone for less...
Go back to sleep...

Ah, I nearly forgot: “Angry side effect here* vaguely considered then”... Now coming home to roost? terrorism? Most likely, but the laws against terrorism are not for that purpose. They are designed to keep us in check... and keep us on the Doodhas chains... Are private profiteering, international rough trade and money laundering greater than democracy?...
The answer is in our ability to extract ourselves from the very cosy holes we-re buried in... The insider traders will create and manage conflicts to their advantage. We may be lucky and win as well if we tag along like leeches... But is not that what they want? Us becoming blood-suckers like them? Is it worth it? or can we just bob along like corks on a sea of deception and manipulations, hoping democracy is in our grasp? Our happiness may not be related to this at all. Our ability to survive may be.

read line of comments...

read also the original line of comments of Virgil's legacy from which the reinstated comment above was cut short.

of our empty brains...

"I believe in him..."

Throughout history, we humans have believed in stories that do not match the reality because we want instant answers to fill our empty brains and/or our pants.
From early on, the same old stories have been peddled in various context and the myths continue, in various guises. They are ingrained in our social continuum. Thus, some of us will chose to believe the tall stories and forget the grains of salt that created them...

I like science fiction. I have read many cartoon strips from the 1920s onwards, and read books by Jules Verne, a writer who in his very own style exploited our new dreams and our new freedoms mixed with the power of the unknown... Those elements (dream and freedom) merged in stories in which the impossible becomes possible without having to recourse to gods, witches nor fairies — as this new narrative used the emerging scientific language, not the religious gobbledegook. Yet the stories were and are similar.
Even in the Russian science-fiction, many stories converge towards a theme of survival while faced with impossible foes or odds. Conflicts with our own creatures is common. As mentioned before on this site, I believe modern science fiction came to age with the movie Forbidden Planet.

I am though impressed by the audacity (unless it's sheer laziness) of the writers for some science fiction TV shows. Take Torchwood for example. In the last episode of the first series (?), one can grasp the straight pinch of the Christian resurrection story, including the doubting Thomas and the repenting woman (Gwen Cooper) who can't stop herself saying "I believe in him..." ... Not only that, Jack had given his life (and eventually resurrects from Gwen Cooper's "love-adulation", of course) to save the world from a creature that looks like a devil-goat, a creature killing people with what could be called the shadow of sin. Brilliant!!. And the creature had been extracted from the end of time, a variant of eternal greed lurking inside the heroes, by a character called Bilis!! Of all names! Sick! The name of a yucky disease!!! Great acting, great special FX... Great fun.

Say some of the alien characters in a movie with Bruce Willis "The Fifth Element" (lurve) appear also in Doctor Who and Torchwood... In my publishing days it was called spin-off... Still the same story. different package.

Not to mention that the Christian resurrection story was itself pinched from earlier mythology...

Thus the continuum of misunderstanding our lot is firmly in place like railway tracks from which we cannot escape unless we derail traumatically...

See what I mean (the following is a funny email that's doing the rounds...):
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The  US  standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the US railroads. 

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing..

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in  England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including  England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's arse came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' arses.)

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. 

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's arse. And you thought being a horse's arse wasn't important?

Ancient horse's arses control almost everything...
and CURRENT Horses Arses are controlling everything else.

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But for some, life is not a dream. Survival is a nightmare...
----------------------------
A Somber Warning on Afghanistan

By ALISON SMALE
Published: September 13, 2009
GENEVA — Western powers now in Afghanistan run the risk of suffering the fate of the Soviet Union there if they cannot halt the growing insurgency and an Afghan perception that they are foreign invaders, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

In a speech opening a weekend gathering of military and foreign policy experts, Mr. Brzezinski, who was national security adviser when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, endorsed a British and German call, backed by France, for a new international conference on the country. He also set the tone for a weekend of somber assessments of the situation.

He noted that it took about 300 U.S. Special Forces — fighting with Northern Alliance troops — to overthrow Taliban rule after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Now, however, with about 100,000 U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, those forces are increasingly perceived as foreign invaders, much as the Soviet troops were from the start, Mr. Brzezinski said.



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The story above regarding the Russian invasion (and the present one by NATO although we deny it's an invasion) is a repeat of what happened with the English in that part of the world earlier last century, itself a repeat of various successive invasion of the place... going back to Genghis Khan's invasion which was one of the many in a series of invasions by foreign powers. Invasions that more or less failed...

In the history of invasion, not just Afghanistan, despite the devastating impact from the fighting, the result on the general populace is only a gradual shift, never an immediate change of beliefs nor direct change of allegiances, despite the new pressures, dangers, torture and deaths. Even the Romans, during the Pax Romana, had to fight against insurgencies. Insurgencies and invasions from Huns and other tribes that eventually led to the downfall of Rome, rather than its debauchery...

Only when the original people is erased, like the Neanderthals were, can the invaders and their rulers install their own people — and even then, there will be some growing disagreement, eventually leading to treason, treachery, fights... power shifts... etc.

So in order to win the space, one has to rewrite the narrative and eliminate entire populations rather than doing conquests or domination by "management"... unless...

Yet I believe change can happen quickly if the right words rather than swords are used... But the right words are the most difficult to find when an "invasion" is on.

And by words I do not mean something we understand because we know but because we feel and share... Words that are music to our heart. Primordial as well, not just stylistically pretty or designed. I mean like the sounds that armies used to charge forward to. The beat in the drums that was used as a signal to guide troops, according to the rythm, it also was and is primordial in inducing the trance that modifies our stack of beliefs, albeit for an instant to start with. Aggression is manipulated to kill or not — or our acceptance of peace is created. That's why "they" use music as "torture". Not because of the loudness but because its trance inducing ability can destroy our links to the continuum while creating new links to it... song and dance as distractions from our ingrained brainwashing until our ingrained brainwashing fizzles...

may be I should go and take my pills...

I had banked too close to the hangars...

I will carry on here using someone else's words and analysis of someone else....

He contrasted the selflessness and heroism of the early air pioneers with the pettiness of those left on the ground. In his 1937 memoir, Terre des Hommes (Wind, Sand and Stars), there is a wonderful passage in which he relates the time when he and his radio telegrapher were lost over the sea with their fuel running out. With their lives in mortal danger, they received a delayed message from a government official at Casablanca airport, from where they had taken off, which stated, “Monsieur De Saint-Exupéry, I am obliged to advise Paris to take disciplinary action against you for banking too close to the hangars on take-off.” Saint-Ex responds,

It was true, I had banked too close to the hangars. It was also true that a man was doing his job by getting angry. In an airport office I would have received such a reproach with humility. But here it reached us where it had no right to reach us. It was out of place here among these scattered stars, this bed of fog, this threatening taste of the sea. We held our destiny in our hands with the destiny of the mail and of our vessel, we had trouble enough just steering to stay alive, and that man was purging his petty spite on us. Yet far from being annoyed Neri and I felt a vast and sudden exultation. …We read once more that message from a madman who claimed to have some business with us, and tacked towards Mercury.

overpriced military

Here again I will use someone else's words:

One can argue that I am being optimistic, that by focusing on the last 60 years of Great Power tranquillity I am ignoring millennia of war. Maybe a large military is like an insurance policy: you hope you never need it, but it helps you sleep at night. But one shouldn’t spend more on insurance than the value of one’s goods. If we fear a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, let us keep our Navy strong in the Pacific. If we decide, for whatever reason, that stability in Baluchistan is important to our well being, let’s teach our Special Forces to speak Balochi. But we can no longer afford to assume that the stability of the entire world is vital to U.S. national security or that it can be maintained by our overpriced military.

capable of anything .....

In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to uncovering shocking information, but for sheer cynicism, I am struggling to think of anything that compares to the revelations contained in the unclassified ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti prisoner whose release was ordered last week by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (PDF).

In the ruling, to put it bluntly, it was revealed that the U.S. government tortured an innocent man to extract false confessions and then threatened him until he obligingly repeated those lies as though they were the truth.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/a-truly-shocking-guantana_b_305227.html

great fun galloping about....

Churchill was born in 1874 into a Britain that was washing the map pink, at the cost of washing distant nations blood red. Victoria had just been crowned Empress of India, and the scramble for Africa was only a few years away. At Harrow School and then Sandhurst, he was told a simple story: the superior white man was conquering the primitive, dark-skinned natives, and bringing them the benefits of civilisation. As soon as he could, Churchill charged off to take his part in "a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples". In the Swat valley, now part of Pakistan, he experienced, fleetingly, a crack of doubt. He realised that the local population was fighting back because of "the presence of British troops in lands the local people considered their own," just as Britain would if she were invaded. But Churchill soon suppressed this thought, deciding instead they were merely deranged jihadists whose violence was explained by a "strong aboriginal propensity to kill".

He gladly took part in raids that laid waste to whole valleys, destroying houses and burning crops. He then sped off to help reconquer the Sudan, where he bragged that he personally shot at least three "savages".

The young Churchill charged through imperial atrocities, defending each in turn. When concentration camps were built in South Africa, for white Boers, he said they produced "the minimum of suffering". The death toll was almost 28,000, and when at least 115,000 black Africans were likewise swept into British camps, where 14,000 died, he wrote only of his "irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men". Later, he boasted of his experiences there: "That was before war degenerated. It was great fun galloping about."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html

We've already posted on this site about Winston's racism... Read article at top.

no magic number but...

Breaking a Long Silence on Population Control
By

Major American environmental groups have dodged the subject of population control for decades, wary of getting caught up in the bruising politics of reproductive health.

Yet, virtually alone, the Center for Biological Diversity is breaking the taboo by directly tying population growth to environmental problems through efforts like giving away condoms in colorful packages depicting endangered animals. The idea is to start a debate about how overpopulation crowds out species and hastens climate change — just when the world is welcoming Baby No. 7 Billion.

“Wrap with care, save the polar bear,” reads one of the packages. “Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl,” says another.

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the center, a membership-based nonprofit organization in Tucson, said he had an aha moment a few years ago. “All the species that we save from extinction will eventually be gobbled up if the human population keeps growing,” he said.

In the United States, the birth rate has fallen steadily since the baby boom, from 3.6 births per woman in 1960 to 2.0 today, or just under the replacement level, at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next. Yet even at that rate, demographers estimate, the country will grow from 311 million people now to 478 million by the end of the century, because of both births and immigration.

The highest birth rates — from five to more than six births per woman — are occurring in a handful of nations in Africa and Asia, including Nigeria and Yemen. Yet among large economies, the United States is second only to Australia in the amount of carbon dioxide it emits per capita, according to the latest figures from the federal Energy Information Administration.

“Every person you add to the country makes all these tremendous demands on the environment,” said Joel E. Cohen, chief of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University.

But experts are reluctant to suggest an ideal birth rate. “There isn’t any magic number,” Dr. Cohen said.

read more at : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/science/earth/bringing-up-the-issue-of-population-growth.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

 

see story at top...