And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm.
-- 2 Kings 4:34, KJV
My quotes and notes.
By Lucy Kellaway
Published: December 14 2008 19:59 | Last updated: December 14 2008 19:59
Last week, I sent an e-mail to a friend who had just lost his job. “I’m so sorry,” I wrote. “Your bosses are morons to have got rid of such a genius as you. I can only suppose a queue will shortly stretch round the block as less brain-dead employers clamour to take you on. Hope you are OK.”
The e-mail was heartfelt except for one word, and that was “shortly”. I don’t expect a queue to form for my friend shortly. Even geniuses are not getting snapped up quickly – unless they happen to be security guards, social workers, accountants or teachers.
In a trice, I had a message back. He said he had had a brief panic about the mortgage and school fees but otherwise was really rather cheerful. Indeed, he was in such high spirits that he even sent me a funny anecdote*.
I could not help comparing the tone of his message with one that I got the very same afternoon from another friend who works for a company that has also been celebrating Christmas with some savage job cuts. Never, she said, had her morale been as bad. The weight of work was crippling as she was now doing the jobs of three people. There was talk of pay cuts. The office was spookily quiet, too; since most of her friends had been sacked, there wasn’t even anyone around to moan to. Worst of all was the fear that her job would be next.
It is tempting to conclude from these two messages that, if there is one thing worse for hitherto successful, well-paid people than being fired, it is not being fired. Those who have been axed don’t need to take the sacking personally, and not working in the days before Christmas can be rather jolly. Whereas for those who have not been fired, the not-so-festive season this year is an orgy of fear and drudgery.
There might be some truth in this now but it is not going to stay true for long. The grimness of the unemployed will get worse as no queues form to take them on, while the grimness of those in work will, in time, start to recede. This is not because the economy will improve – it is because the grimness itself will bring on a sounder and altogether more realistic approach to work.
Over the past decade, the rich, professional classes have developed an increasingly unhealthy attitude to their jobs. We took our jobs and our fat salaries for granted and felt aggrieved if our bonuses were not even bigger than the year before. We demanded that the work be interesting in itself and, even more dangerously and preposterously, that it should have meaning.
The result of all these demands was, of course, dissatisfaction. We had climbed to the very top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and discovered that, at the top of the pyramid, the air was very thin indeed. As an agony aunt, I found that by far the most common problem readers submitted came from rich and senior professionals who had all their basic needs more than catered for, leaving their souls in torment. Help me, I’m bored, they cried. Or, worse: what does my work mean?
In the past few months, anguish of this sort has vanished. When one’s job is at risk and one’s savings are a shadow of their former selves, the search for meaning at work is meaningless. The point of a job becomes rather more basic: to feed and house (and, at a pinch, to educate) one’s family and oneself. If we can do this, then anything we manage over and above this is a bonus. Once expectations have fully adjusted to this new reality and we see earning money as the main reason for work, greater satisfaction will follow.
Low expectations have an awful lot to be said for them. In surveys women turn out to be more satisfied at work than men, in spite of earning less for the same jobs and doing most of the work at home too. The reason is simple: women’s expectations of working life are lower. Similarly, Denmark is the happiest country in the world in spite of having a cold, dark climate and a top tax rate of 68 per cent. The stoical Danes do not expect so much of life and, expecting less, find what little they have rather nice.
BOXING DQ’S FOR SELF-DEFENSE
Boxing AKA the Sweet Science, as we all know, may be a science but it’s not all that sweet. Let’s face it; what’s sweet about a sport that has as its ultimate goal to render you unconscious via blunt head trauma? As sour-intentioned as the “sweet” science is there is an even more unsavory side—the area of illegal blows, disqualification shots (DQs). These DQs have no place inside the ring (sorry, but you’ve got to keep your teeth to yourself, Mr. Tyson) but for the street, well, that’s another story altogether. Pure boxing, with zero illegal shots added to the mix is already a formidable self-defense art; add the DQs and you’ve got a leaner, meaner street ready animal.
Below we set forth a primer on how to take the already efficient standard boxing arsenal and add the bad intentioned shots back into the mix to make it a street-ready self-defense option. We’ll only touch on a few of the higher-percentage shots; for a great deal more information on this topic see our exhaustive instructional set The Complete Pugilist.
There are many (many) more illegal shots/inserts that we can cull from the boxing arsenal but these half dozen will serve you well when the game is not inside the ring, there is no referee to stop the fight and the stakes are higher than a mark on your record. Train hard; train safe!
Thanks everyone and have a great weekend!
Mark Hatmaker
It is inseparable from human nature to HOPE and FEAR. In speculation, when the market goes against you, you hope every day will be the last day – and you lose more than you should had you not listened to hope.
The successful trader has to fight these two deep-seated instincts. He has to reverse what you might call his natural impulses. It is absolutely wrong to gamble in stocks the way the average man does. Instead of hoping he must fear; instead of fearing he must hope.
He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit.
-Jessie Livermore
Mais l’orgie et la camaraderie des femmes m’étaient interdites. Pas même un compagnon. Je me voyais devant une foule exaspérée, en face du peloton d’exécution, pleurant du malheur qu’ils n’aient pu comprendre, et pardonnant! – Comme Jeanne d’Arc! – ‘Prêtes, professeurs, maîtres, vous vous trompez en me livrant à la justice. Je n’ai jamais été de ce peuple-ci; je n’ai jamais été chrétien; je suis de la race qui chantait dans le supplice; je ne comprends pas les lois; je n’ai pas le sens moral, je suis une brute: vous vous trompez…’
But orgy and the comradeship of women were forbidden me. Not even a companion. I could see myself in front of an angry crowd, facing the firing-squad, weeping with the unhappiness which they would not have been able to understand, and forgiving them! - Like Joan of Arc! - ‘Priests, doctors, masters, you are mistaken in handing me over to justice. I have never belonged to this people; I have never been a Christian; I belong to the race which used to sing under torture; I do not understand the laws; I have no moral sense, I am an animal: you are making a mistake…’
(Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer, tr. Oliver Bernard)
I was on the scientific faculty of a "well-known American university" for 10 years. Academic freedom is a fairy tale, and universities are essentially corrupted by their funding. Here's why:
- A faculty member is a nobody if he/she doesn't pull in enough grant money. To get, say, $100,000 in grant funding, we had to get $167,000, of which the administration immediately took away $67,000 ('overhead'). This 'overhead' determined your stature with the boss ('dean').
- 90% of the grants in my department were with either federal agencies or the military.
- The administration's evaluations of faculty were largely based on grant income (not teaching or research). Untenured faculty without grants were fired, period.
- Even tenured faculty were considered 2nd-class citizens (low pay, lousy assignments) if they had no grants. It was a grim fate.
To promote 9/11 Truth, a professor would have to throw it all away: no grants, no research, low pay, crappy treatment. Also, his administration would desperately try to shut him up, out of fear of losing university-wide grants.
This is why so few academics have spoken up, and amounts to corruption of what should be a free-thinking part of society. One has to admire the courage of people like Steven Jones (and he left BYU, remember?).
Great letter, Christian, and my heart is with you as you rattle the cages at BU. It takes guts to do what you have done.
“Take stock of those around you and you will...hear them talk in precise terms about themselves and their surroundings, which would seem to point to them having ideas on the matter. But start to analyze those ideas and you will find that they hardly reflect in any way the reality to which they appear to refer, and if you go deeper you will discover that there is not even an attempt to adjust the ideas of this reality. Quite the contrary: through these notions the individual is trying to cut off any personal vision of reality, of his own very life. For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his "ideas" are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality.”
~JOSÉ ORTEGA y GASSET
"Any individual who rises to the national political level is, of necessity and by definition, committed to the authoritarian-corporatist state. The current system will not allow anyone to be elected from either of the two major parties who is determined to dismantle even one part of that system."
- Arthur Silber
The fundamental difference in this, between people like The Viking and people like me is that he feels he lives in a safe, fair place, where everything is orderly and above board, and good is rewarded, bad punished. For myself, i feel profoundily ill at ease in the world of human society. i see it as The Matrix, a lie, a system rigged to punish original thought and integrity, and to reward stupidity and servility. My whole life’s experience has led me here; whether that qualifies me to see clearly, or merely explains why i’m wrong, i myself cannot judge. We all think we’re right, of course.
My parents were ill-meaning buffoons. My first memory of school is, age about 5, being run into by a girl in the playground; we both fell down, she started crying; a teacher came over, pointed at me and shouted accusingly, “I saw what you did!” And so on. At every stage of education, my teachers have largely been dysfunctional morons. i did badly at school, my brain not really waking up till i was 19. i found university to be largely a self-serving system of bullshit, in which patronising lifers stifled any real thought or learning, encouraging servility either in the overt form of Literary Theory or, slightly more subtly, giving bad marks to anything that deviated too far from the official line. The exceptions had either been sacked or relegated to tiny offices and treated like scum.
i’ve been unemployed for two years, and temped - mainly at minimum wage data entry - for another three. i’ve been rejected for about 250 jobs.
Looking at myself from the outside, how could such a temp not distrust authority? 95% of the ‘authority figures’ i’ve met were fakes. i’m not enough of a Gnostic to hate the physical world; but the world of human society seems almost purposefully designed as a prison.
Firearms are useful for defense against crime. Little more. Those who think they could band together to defeat the Globalist Powers are mindless nincompoops or crypto-Zionist provocateurs like Jeff Rense. Anyone with a bit of ground force military experience knows that scattered rabbles of rebels are over rated in a true total war. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and such like were not total wars. The American Civil War was a total war (or became one by the time Sherman marched to the sea). In a total war, such as where a government seeks to survive AT ANY COST – protesters are not tolerated, news is controlled or shut down, things like the Geneva Conventions are thrown totally away. Total wars resemble what took place on the German Eastern Front during WWII. Actually they more resemble the Battle of Verdun in WWI. If you don’t know what I mean, then you should study them.
By early 93 there was said to be 3 million militia volunteers who were arming, and practicing to defend liberty because of Ruby Ridge and Waco. By 95, because of the Oklahoma City attack, and an economy that was picking up, those potbellied heroes scattered to the winds. Units that once had 200 men fell suddenly to 12 and so on. But that was just as well. During 1994 I asked many of them what their local plan of action was. Almost every one stated that their MASTER PLAN was, in the event of a Government show down, to retreat to their individual homes, and trailers, and to die defending their guns. Anyone who has read even a modicum of military history knows that such a plan was little more than collective suicide and the romantic self-aggrandizement of bigmouthed potbellied men.
While North Vietnam had the whole communist block behind them, the Afghan rebels had refuge in Pakistan, and even the Iraqis have helpful friends in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, an American revolutionary force would have no safe haven, nor even the French army and navy that they had in the Revolutionary War. Canada will not offer safe haven. Mexico could give a rat’s ass about helping a bunch of armed gringos with an attitude. Not only that, but the US government or the Globalists are ready to attack such a force with a total war – not the playacting wars they have leveled at third world rebels. Why? Because the USA has one of the most dangerous nuclear forces in the world – not to mention a lot of other really powerful arms and abilities. The Globalists are not about to ALLOW all that power to fall into the hands of a rabble of Constitutionalists. Do you think they have spent over 150+ years, countless lives of their victims, and vast treasures just to lightly throw it all away to a pack of small-arms-rebels? Believe me, in that fight they will be so dirty, so evil, so violent that it would make Stalin blush!
There was a war fought against the early members of the N.W.O. right here in the USA. It was called the American Civil War. Even though the South was weaker in manpower and arms, because of its valor and abilities the conflict started out with an almost 1 to 1 odds. It was slightly in the North’s favor, but only if it could hold out long enough for its naval power to starve the South of arms. A modern war today would not be anything like that. Today’s odds would be more like 30 to 1 against the freedom fighters. And anyone who knows anything about wars, knows that 5 to 1 is usually certain defeat for the lesser.
In a modern civil war the dark powers WILL use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical warfare (NBC war). This is not going to be your grand pappy’s musket skirmish line. Back in late 93 I recall one of the big discussions on the patriot radio programs was where to by an NBC protective suit. As if, if a few guys could scrounge those up that all would go well. Since my brother had gone to a full NBC school I knew how utterly foolish these patriots were. Though it never reached the World press, my brother’s military class was privy to a deadly chemical attack launched by the Egyptians on the Israelis during the 73 war. The attack followed the very same format that was S.O.P. for the US Army at the time: 1st salvos are an LSD gas. No, (repeat NO) gas mask, filtering system, or suit is able to prevent a few molecules of LSD from seeping in. It only takes a few such molecules to render soldiers silly. In the case of the Israelis who where hit at the targeted bunker, all had lost their senses and had then taken off their gas masks. That’s how the LSD gas works. 2nd Salvos were a nerve agent, a blood agent, and mustard gas. So the 1993 patriots were day dreaming how they would withstand a “gas attack”, not knowing at all that by US Army S.O.P. such an attack would involve 4 agents, not one, and the likelihood of anyone surviving it was about nil (just as it was for the Israelis at the bunker attacked by the Egyptians). As I recall they patriots also wanted to buy atropine shots to protect themselves from nerve gas. My brother told me the story about a military officer at his school who accidentally got a small whiff of VX Nerve gas. It took almost 100 atropine shots just to keep him alive long enough to get him to the hospital!! The single atropine shots that are issued to soldiers in the field are worthless. They are little more than psychological armor.
Are small arms and .50 cals and such like really the stuff of taking on the N.W.O.? Yes, but only if the N.W.O. wants to stage a media show like Afghanistan or Iraq. Even Fallujah was little more than a retard effort. Here is how I would have dealt with the town: 3 AM, large planes swoop in and drop anti-personnel mines in a ring around the town. 5 AM saturation bombing from as many B52s and B1s as is possible around the clock. During this time arty is brought up and takes over by nightfall. 6 AM next day, powerful ground force moves in behind mine-sweepers. That would not be a media show. That is almost the way the US Army dealt with small German villages near the end of WWII who offered any resistance. Some were bombed and others were shelled flat. The Arab has never actually seen real warfare.
The truth is the N.W.O. is looking for a fight with American patriots – not quite yet, but soon. The fight they plan for will look nothing like the media war shows you have been used to seeing. It will involve truly sinister and scientific means to exterminating you and your families. If Robert E. Lee was here today, he’d suggest you seek a court house in Appomattox immediately! What you face today and the odds against you are many orders more dangerous than what he faced in Virginia in 1865 when he surrendered his army. Are guns of any real worth defending freedom? Not in a real all out conflict – and that his how American civil wars are fought: total and all out.