Going Forward Back-o-the-Mountains

Mister Potato Head waves bye-bye to those who choose to stay behind in the Old Paradigm, signs "so-long-it's-been-good-to-know-ya'" to those like a couple cited in a comment on The Oil Drum who declared that "they didn't wish to be the "sort of people" who stored potatoes," and when the commenter pointed out to them that "they'd actually be wise to have a bit of food stored in their home for unforeseen circumstances and offered to pay for it myself," "his wife simply said "we'd rather die" and that ended that discussion."

It would, wouldn't it?

Discovery channel has come up with a show for those who would rather live: it's called The Colony, "where real people from a wide variety of backgrounds and skills will be challenged to rebuild their own civilization in a devastated world."

The Catacombs is looking to build a New Paradigm from a civilization not yet devastated but already endangered in a world that needs changing if it is to provide a decent life for our progeny yet unborn.

The Catacombs intends to be a community-driven Paradigm Change site, not a hunker-down, rugged individualist survival bolthole, and it is the creation of similar communities this site hopes to promote.

We are looking forward, not Looking Backward, to the "resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia" that was Edward Bellamy's fever dream looking forward to the year 2000. Bellamy would have felt right at home at a Bilderberg conference, or sharing a glass with Gramsci, perhaps. A conclave here at The Catacombs would favor G.K. Chesterton over Bellamy and be more confortable sharing a locally brewed beer with Wilhelm Ropke.

Preparations for August 1st's Valley-wide "Great Seed Swap" continue apace. Down here, we're the sort of people who store spuds, seeds and what-have-you, the sort of people who jerry-rig repair materials when store-bought isn't possible, the sort of people who believe with William Faulkner what he stated in Stockholm in December of 1950 when awarded the Nobel Prize for literature: "I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."

We wouldn't "rather die" than store potatoes. We will endure, we will prevail long past the time when the foolish, infantile and narcissistic suburbanites have died and their way of life become extinct. It is they who look backward: we look ahead; we are going forward.

Going Athens on Main Street?

"Going Athens," an expression I invented today, comes from the world of American history, from a little known incident--"The Battle of Athens"--that took place on Aug 1st, 1946, in Athens, Tennessee, an incident that deserves greater study for its possible contemporary implications. A brief account of the incident can be found here. A 1992 Hallmark movie, An American Story, was loosely based on the incident.

There is something vaguely apt about posting it on Bastille Day.

The concept occurred to me last night upon reading a comment placed on the board of a financial blog I follow: the comment can be found at 17:54:36 EDT posted by "Black Swan." It deals with the threat of citizen violence against the city council of Cape Coral, Florida, which "are doubling the number of police at Council meetings and are installing metal detectors. This comes after a meeting attended by 500 citizens erupted in many threats against Council members, and with half of the citizens were so enraged, that they stormed out before the end of the meeting." Read the comment and said rage is easily understood. How far might that rage take them? A look at the "Battle of Athens," also known as the "McMinn County War," might be illustrative.

What the "Battle of Athens" was all about was nothing less than a violent armed rebellion by a group of WWII veterans against a corrupt political machine, a rebellion that resulted in victory for the rebels and universal condemnation of them by the media of the time. Violence is not a good solution to problems, unless it furthers the interests of the financial oligarchy bent on dominating every aspect of all life on earth, in which case it becomes necessary force required to maintain order and therefore though lamentable, inevitable. Violence or even the threat thereof by the plebs is terrorism, plain and simple, particularly if it is directed against their betters: the financial overlords and their political lap dogs; there can be only one response to such effrontery.

Perhaps a better-known Twentieth Century American insurrection took place in 1920 in a West Virginia town that became the subject of the 1987 John Sayles film Matewan. The Battle of Matewan in turn led to "the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the American Civil War, the Battle of Blair Mountain," to quote a Wikipedia entry. The latter, larger battle has been written about in the 2006 history The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising and in the 1987 novel Storming Heaven, among other works, but this important part of American history is not taught in the indoctrination camps called schools, nor does one hear much about it. Instead, the news from Tennessee is that "After losing homes, families move into tents." "Tea Parties" have taken the place of hurling dynamite at the Athens jail.

"Going Athens," however, is a remote but nevertheless conceivable reaction on Main Street to the looting and repression being foisted upon the public by a globalist cabal determined to impose a global rule by a supposed intellectual elite that has replaced the corn-pone corruption of post-war McMinn County, Tennessee, with the slick Saul-Alinsky-style Acorn activist such as the one who occupies the White House.

This writer does not believe that "Going Athens" is a wise course of action, if for no other reason that the forces arrayed against any latter-day uprising would be devastating. It bears remembering that during the Battle of Blair Mountain, on orders of WWII hero Gen. Billy Mitchell, "Army bombers from Maryland were also used to disperse the miners, a rare example of Air Power being used by the federal government against US citizens. A combination of gas and explosive bombs left over from the fighting in World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair. At least one did not explode and was recovered by the miners; it was used months later to great effect during treason and murder trials following the battle." Just imagine Predator drones instead of tasers and, well, you get the picture, I'm sure.

Going bye-bye might be a better option for those who believe that the U.S. and other northern hemisphere countries are becoming more like Caligula's Rome than Plato's Athens. Those of that turn of mind should give thought to resettlement in a rural Shangri-la, where "Going Athens" is called a "cacerolazo."

Madagascar Back-o-the-Mountains

"Going Madagascar," an expression I learned today, comes from the world of computer games and means "going into isolation," more or less; it refers to a pandemic quarantine situation in the eponymous game Pandemic II. It means closing out the world beyond.

In no small measure, I've "gone Madagascar" myself, though linked by telecommunications to the rest of humankind beyond the valley. This morning, as I harvested my oranges while keeping a close idea on the price movement in SRS, a good day-trade vehicle, I asked myself how I would fare if communications failed; shortly thereafter, they have!

I have a WAN miniport and we're experiencing strong, cold winds this sunny day; apparently, one of the repeater antennae has been damaged. I can no longer track the price of the ETF, but I suspect the world will not end as a result. And, my but the juice from just two of those big oranges was sweet!

The winter root crops are going well, as are the beans, peas and cabbages. They don't depend upon telecommunications. As for seeds for next year, on August 1st we're having a valley-wide get-together of small producers to exchange open-pollinated, non-Frankenseeds, during a day-long program sponsored by the Agricultural Institute, a fair designed to provide coordination and instruction on how to operate in the various farmers' markets running here in the valley. I will be presenting the finance module in the hope that this will convince the town government or their opposition to fund our hoped-for business incubator and move forward on getting people off the dole and into productive activities centered in our valley.

Will we shut ourselves off from the world one day? Not necessarily, but as far as the swine flu pandemic goes, I feel safe here in Traslasierra. We haven't had much tourism during this winter vacation, and it is my opinion that the idea of tourism as the lynchpin of the local economy is mistaken: we have great productive potential here, but it requires paradigm change to realize it.

Could be we'll have to go Madagascar.