Defender el Garbanzo

See the simple chick-pea, the garbanzo in Spanish, a legume now believed to have medicinal properties akin to the widely used anti-depressant drug Prozac: garbanzos produce serotonin, the so-called "happiness hormone," though strictly speaking, it is not a hormone.

The title of this entry translates literally as "defend the chickpea," but it is a figure of speech formerly used in Spain which stood for "earning a living." The garbanzo, you see, was the staple food of country folk, particularly in the south, in Andalucia (though by no means only there), before the advent of the mass tourism, building boom and sea-of-plastic greenhouses that changed the character of the place through a kind of "progress" that has in the final accounting perhaps brought less happiness than the garbanzo.

Never a popular food item in northern countries, the chickpea began to attract attention with the introduction of the Middle Eastern staple hummus, a preparation now often used as a dip. Recipes abound, but in essence, it consists of chickpeas run through a blender with olive oil, garlic, cumin and lemon juice.

Garbanzos are not difficult to grow. I plan to try a patch this year.

Earning a living growing things is no easy matter, less so now that such monstrosities as the Codex Alimentarius are being introduced to eliminate once and for all the independent farmer, the yeoman, the peasant who was the backbone of the West for most of its history. Social engineering has successfully brainwashed most of today's urban and suburban dwellers into believing the peasant was an ignorant, backward brute who led a dreary and brutish life, but this is far from the truth.

A society not based on the land is not a healthy society. One does not have to make much of a leap to conclude based on observation that most contemporary societies--consumer-based societies in particular--are sickening, perhaps sickening unto death, as natural law is flouted and an ever-greater detachment from all that is natural has infected entire societies.

Grow a patch of garbanzos, harvest them, eat them: beats a prescription for Prozac.

Willoughby South

That's Mr. Gart Williams looking longingly at the sign identifying a station stop that wasn't to be found on the 1960 New Haven Railroad line, but instead existed in that special place known as the Twilight Zone.

Nearly half a century has passed since I first thought how pleasant it would be to make "A Stop at Willoughby," as that particular episode was called. Willoughby was a "peaceful, restful place, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure," according to the conductor on a train that had passed through the time tunnel back to 1881.

This episode from the program's first season was acknowledged by its creator, the late Rod Serling, as his favorite, and indeed it remains one of the best remembered and most popular of the 156 episodes. Why?

Well, the conductor said it all, didn't he? When all is said and done, modern life with all its empty thrills and narcissistic vacuity goes by in a blur, and the cup is nearly always half empty. The closing narration expressed the nostalgia for a Willoughby that exists within us all: "Willoughby? Maybe it's wishful thinking nestled in a hidden part of a man's mind, or maybe it's the last stop in the vast design of things, or perhaps, for a man like Mr. Gart Williams, who climbed on a world that went by too fast, it's a place around the bend where he could jump off. Willoughby? Whatever it is, it comes with sunlight and serenity, and is a part of the Twilight Zone."

Traslasierra, on the other hand, is sunny and serene and most definitely not part of the Twilight Zone, though it has that other-worldly feel to it that one can still find in rural areas largely passed by as the Urban Ambition Express barrels past. This is Catacombs country, an enclave of slowing down to a walk and living a life of full measure.

The Southern Cone is filled with places like this; climates and topography vary, crops grown are different, modcons may be more or less, but they have in common a pace that has been lost in the so-called developed world. It makes for a good "last stop," a place in which one can set down roots and live a life in large measure insulated from the tumult of a world in growing economic distress and social discontent with excessive political control, a place in which social engineering has yet to tinker much with the time-honored traditions of the folks who call these places home.

Better Willoughby than Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 fantasized dystopic technocratic dictatorship in which society is directed by a slow-talking computer named “Alpha-Soisant” with a whiskey-and-black-tobacco-broken, bad-barbiturate-habit voice that explains to secret agent Lemme Caution that everything is relative, governed by probability, and the word “love” is without meaning.

Are you holding a thirty-year commutation ticket to Alphaville?

Before your ticket gets punched one too many times, you might consider getting off at Willoughby South. We'll be waiting for you at the plaza.

Stop the Madness!

No, this is not a weight loss infomercial: it is a last-gasp attempt to arouse a comatose consumer society to save themselves from soon-to-be-inevitable indentured servitude to a banking cartel that is quickly seizing not only the reins of power but the food supply of the blindered brutes who plod along the corridors of power. If the madness is not stopped by concerted citizen action, the only remaining alternative to 1984-style social control mechanisms will be reminiscent of the opening sentence of Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, the most widely printed book originally published in English: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Here is a quote attributed to Robert Hemphill, the Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Georgia: "If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation.This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the
commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation,cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not,we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can
investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon [emphasis added]."

It is almost certainly too late to do any further investigation and reflection: the bankers have for all practical purposes taken nearly complete control of the governments of the Western nations, and there is precious little you will be able to do about it, save take to the streets (or perhaps the hills) when the screws are tightened further. There is an old saying that goes: "Discretion is the better part of valor," and it likely applies here. Head for the hills. Make your way To the Catacombs, if not here in the Southern Cone, then wherever you can create your own.

Understand this: creating a viable Catacombs is a group effort that requires a minimum of four adults and preferably more, living and working in a less structured property and wealth distribution arrangement than that of the prevailing paradigm in the West.

The madness to be stopped is no longer societal; that is now outside the control of even large and organized groups. No, the madness to be stopped is one's own participation in a system doomed to failure. Stop! Stop supporting the system by playing a part in it. Convert intrinsically worthless paper assets into tangible goods and land. Cash out the retirement plan while you still can, even with the tax penalty. If you can, form or join a network of like-minded families who are actively doing something other than talking!

The bankers have taken over the management of the United States and nearly all the West: period. That is a fact, and denying that fact is dangerous to your future. Unless and until a mass movement to destroy the Fed and the extant financial system is initiated by way of a general strike to STOP THE MADNESS, the controls over the citizenry will increase apace, and the window of opportunity for escape will have closed. All productive assets will have been bought up for pennies on the dollar by the financial oligarchy; distribution of essentials will be controlled by the financial oligarchy; any form of protest against the financial oligarchy, their puppet governments and their social engineering agenda will be met with increasingly severe repression and daily life will assume a degree of regimentation designed to induce maximum passivity.

Fight or flight: there are no other options, save for submission and servitude.

How far are you willing to go now to avoid a more difficult situation later? How much discomfort are you willing to endure now to avoid servitude later?

Western societies are collapsing: even a Fed office is admitting it! For a number of years now, various commentators have compared societal collapse stages with the five stages of coming to terms with grief. One of these, Dimitri Orlov, summed this up well in an essay entitled "The Five Stages of Collapse."

"Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in "business as usual" is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that "the market shall provide" is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.

Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost, as local social institutions, be they charities or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for "kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity" (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes "May you die today so that I die tomorrow" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism."

It seems safe to say that the West is internalizing Stage One and the prudent can see Stage Two looming up upon the horizon like a dreadnought taking aim with the twenty inchers.

Paradigm Change, anyone?

COSI Fan Tutti

A little pun, but not a fun topic.

Cosi Fan Tutti is a Mozart opera. The title, loosely translated from the Italian, means "Women are like that." Literally translated, it would be more like: "That's the way they do it."

COSI is the acronym for the Standing Committee for Internal Security, a secretive European Union supranational entity not yet in existence thanks to the Irish rejection of the nefarious Lisbon Treaty, which will now be put before the Irish again, now that they are suffering great economic distress and will be more likely to sell out their identity for the proverbial pig foot and bottle of beer that will be given them by the PTB if they behave and vote "yes" this Fall.

"Critics of the plans have claimed that moves to create a new "information system architecture" of Europe-wide police and security databases will create a "surveillance state,"states a June 10th article in the June 10th Telegraph.co.uk . "Civil liberties groups say the proposals would create an EU ID card register, internet surveillance systems, satellite surveillance, automated exit-entry border systems operated by machines reading biometrics and risk profiling systems," the piece goes on.

How much more evidence is needed to awaken Westerners to the dangers they face with respect to their remaining liberties, and, more importantly, those of their posterity? When will the West awaken to the danger within? How long will you passively wait before you decide to act rather than worry and complain? When will you be prepared to change the paradigm in which you are trapped, your resistance to the perversion of Western societies like that of Br'er Rabbit struggling with the tar baby?

It is increasingly obvious how the lords and masters of the oligarchy do things: security states, financial crises, "terrorist" threats, unpayable and soon unserviceable debt... Cosi Fan Tutti.

What way will you do things from here on out?

Change your paradigm while you still can.

WHO Hits the Panic Button

So, the long-awaited pandemic panic may now begin: Gentlemen, start your engines!

WHO declares first 21st century flu pandemic

"Phase 6, if we call a phase 6, doesn't mean anything concerning severity, it is concerning geographic spread ... Pandemic means global, but it doesn't have any connotation of severity or mildness,' WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said", according to the Reuters article.

In fact, the article further states: "In fact, what we are seeing with this virus so far is overwhelmingly to date mild disease. So we would think that this event is really a moderate event for the time being, because the numbers are high but the disease is overwhelmingly mild,' he told Reuters Television before the committee meeting."

Who believes that the mild nature of this flu will be emphasized in the MSM whooping and hollering to follow? Not WHO, one is sure.

Get ready for this to be the rationale for travel restriction, school closure, vaccination programs... more and more of the usual suspects, faster and faster until... Niagara Falls!

WHO's on first. Who's next?

Commissar Creep

The link below is to a truly chilling article.

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/47141327.html

Anyone who still doubts the evil intentions of the puppet governments--the collaborators--of the International Evil Empire need read no further to understand that freedom of speech--indeed, all remaining rights and freedoms--are on the chopping block. The fleecing of the sheeple will quickly proceed to the slaughter.

There is little hope that the juggernaut can be stopped in the Northern Hemisphere, but it may well be derailed in the Southern. Those who have begin to eye the exit doors up north are closely watching political turns of events in the Southern Cone. Argentina, for example, is due for legislative elections on 28 June that may cause the left-leaning national government to lose its parliamentary majority and with it control of the ever-more-openly-rebellious provinces that supply the wherewithal for national welfare-state programs. The economies are in recession and increasing hardship is beginning to make itself felt. These countries, however, have a great growth potential now lacking in the north, and are ideal for those who would embrace the low-impact, localized economy, agrarian-based Paradigm that is likely to come to the fore as the only viable alternative to the failed model of finance capitalism and fractional reserve banking, and to the failed Paradigm of consumerism.

The creep of the commissars is speeding up, but the creepy commissars in many failing nations may soon find themselves creeped out by a citizenry that can and will take no more.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

The super-insulated straw bale home pictured below on the right was designed by this writer and built under his supervision. I have lived in it since September 24th, 2005, and have never been happier with a house.




Late autumn here in Traslasierra and the nights grow cool, threatening frost. Just ten days or so ago, there was snow in the sierra and the pass was closed. This photo was taken the following day.


To the right of the photo is the raspberry patch. It began with thirty plants, but now has more than 120! No birth control here!

A reader whose opinion I value suggested I remove the abortion counter widget I've placed on this page, given that it might offend other readers who would then be discouraged from reading further or forming a part of the community we would like to create here at the Catacombs.

Conscience dictates that I keep it, so keep it I shall. I strongly believe that abortion is one more social engineering weapon in the arsenal of the unholy cabal intent on a satanic "enserfment" of nearly all of humankind. Look at the numbers on that counter: all other genocides pale by comparison. Overpopulation, global warming (now morphed into "climate change"), terrorists and domestic extremists... lies, all lies, just as abortion is a lie.

Let others commit demographic suicide. Anyone who wishes to embrace the rural life will soon enough understand the advantage of a large family. The destruction of the family has been a major goal of the globalist cabal, and they have largely attained it.

Home is where the heart is. Abortion is heartless.

Reject globalist propaganda before you become another of its victims.

Change your Paradigm now! Make yourself a home with a heart. We at the Catacombs will do all we can to help you.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Leading Recognition

James Howard Kunstler, the foulmouthed, anti-Christian but oh-so-sanctimonious--as only the smug secular materialist can be--professional doomsayer has written a new post on his vulgarly-named blog, said post entitled "Lagging Recognition." Not surprisingly, it speaks of Jimmy the K's continuing confusion about the actions of Barack Obama, whom even the terminally naive are beginning to recognize as a Slick-Willy-style lackey of the financial oligarchy.

Mr. K joined Dr. Gary North in predicting the end of the world in Y2K, but they are still with us, still pounding their respective drums, still singing the same old songs.

Mr. K makes good points from time to time, has written some interesting books, but "lagging recognition," be it on the part of Big O (not very likely he didn't know all along what was coming) of Mr. K himself that his left-wing, secular materialist savior is nothing more than a non-entity, well... who cares? How about some "leading recognition" for a change?

We're in the leading recognition business here in the Catacombs. We've seen the handwriting on the wall, got the message and slipped away to South America while the rest were bloviating about the perceived end of happy motoring, peak oil, the hyperinflation always just around the corner... On an on they go, in a spin, not knowing the spin they're in...

Let's set things straight, feet firmly planted on the ground.

The West is in the mess it's in because sinful humankind chose to listen to the sibilant hissing that goes "You shall be as gods." The shuck-n-jive of today's moneylenders sounds similar, along with that of their pitchmen in politics. The evil begins with the bankers, extends to their allies, then trickles down to the poor, dumb cattle who fall for the false promises. If you are in some way enmeshed in it, your recognition of your dilemma will always be lagging.

Never did I imagine I would one day quote Timothy Leary's Sixties mantra, but the way things are today... "Tune in, turn on and drop out." Well, in a manner of speaking... Yeah!

Those who are not entirely gormless have by now recognized that all is not right with the world and that life styles they are a-changin'. It goes well beyond that, however; it's the whole planetary Paradigm that's changing, and the sooner you recognize that and act upon that recognition, the better your chances of not getting run over by the metaphorical Bernanke and Barack's Big Truck bearing down upon the unwary and unprepared in the dying days of Kunstler's "Happy Motoring" society.

While Kunstler frets constantly and endlessly about the automobile and the NASCAR-laden south filled with the Christian crackers he holds in contempt and despises, all the while bemoaning how Big O just doesn't seem to get it, others see beyond the failed suburban model straight to the financial district of New York, where those KKKers Kunstler ridicules are seeing Jim Kramers who need killing, cosmopolites who have nothing in common with the folks of "Flyover Country," as they sneeringly refer to the very rural and agrarian regions Kunstler claims to admire. Unless and until the Fed is abolished, its assets confiscated, it principals exiled or imprisoned, John and Jane Q. Public will have a lot more to worry about than not being able to drive to Denny's to load up on hi-carb breakfasts before heading to the Blue Light Specials Kunstler writes on and on about.

I am ready and waiting for you to contact me so that I can tell you specifically how the Southern Cone Catacombs just might be the place for you to take refuge if you wish to get ahead on the learning curve of the New Paradigm that is NOT that of the soulless secular materialist financiers and their camp followers. The rural, local life may by default be the only way left to live a relatively free life, a healthy life, a rewarding life, a life in which a family can flourish, but it is by definition a life worth investigating as the sun sets on the secular materialist, consumption-driven societies whose hubris has done them in at last.

LEAD in recognition! Don't lag. Laggards may find themselves trapped where they will very much wish they were not.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Butch, Sundance, Etta and You

That's Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and Etta Place; you may call yourself whatever you like.

These three refugees from the USA fled the country at the end of the Nineteenth Century and came here to Argentina, to install themselves in Patagonia in 1901. Patagonia was the frontier, and to a certain extent, in a Twenty First Century way, it still is, as are other parts of this thinly populated, vast and fertile land. If you have the sand, there is a place for you here, so long as you understand that when all is said and done, you will carry your own water, so to speak.

This country has 25% of the world's reserve of fresh water, soon to be a resource as coveted as oil if not more so. There is oil here too. In fact, this country has great resource wealth, though little of it is exploited, because the population denisty is thin outside of Greater Buenos Aires and because life isn't all that easy in the Big Empty, where never is heard a word--discouraging, encouraging or otherwise--in English, and what's more, investment capital outside of the transnationals is thin on the ground in the Big Empty.

Didn't stop Butch, Sundance and Etta, though. Why should it stop you?

The movie skipped over their stay in Cholila, a small town in the province of Chubut, but there they were, living in a funky little wooden cabin, nothing like the superinsulated bale house we could build for you! Then again, perhaps you may not want to live in Patagonia. No matter, there's a place here for you somewhere: this is the world's eighth largest country, with 1,068,302 sq mi from which to choose.

Time grows short and interest mounts: if you're interested, drop a line!

What was good enough for the runaway members of the should certainly be good enough for you!

Earth 2100? Try Earth 2010

The American television network ABC has aired what is being described as a globalist propaganda program designed to further demoralize the fleeced sheeple now bleating for mercy from the overlords. Commentary on the program (which I have not seen) can be found at Informationliberation.com, among other sites.

My reading tells me that the program is of the apocalyptic sort, emphasizing the usual suspects of global warming, overpopulation and resource depletion. Oh yes, there's a killer flu thrown in as well, which requires mass quarantines, and everyone is forced to live in the only two "sustainable" locations: New York and California! Now there's a likely situation! But it does neatly take care of the depopulating of flyover country, where all the homegrown "terrorists" live, breed and hide, sustaining themselves with food they grow themselves. Can't have that now, can we?

Rather than fret about some fictional future nearly a hundred years away dreamed up by paid propagandists, it might make more sense to pay closer attention to predictions of what might happen next year! Better yet: read and examine the possibilities, make your own predictions, draw your own conclusions, then act.

Paradigm Change is upon us: whether we choose to change our own paradigm or passively wait to have it changed by default, chosen for us by the Powers That Be, that is the only question. The longer one hesitates, the longer one wastes one's time with nonsense like the network television program, the longer one still believes in the lies told daily by the political puppets of the financial oligarchy, the longer one remains a victim.

The Western world--the former Christendom--is being destroyed by a concerted conspiracy to transform it into a toxic stew of incorporating ingredients of neo-feudalism, fascism and communism, not by a hapless band of incompetent do-gooders. Failure to recognize this simple truth, characterizing it as "conspiracy theory" and then "domestic extremism" is an increasingly incomprehensible denial springing from ignorance and a kind of moral cowardice. It demonstrates too a denial of the instinct of self-preservation.

While an armed uprising may occur in Western nations, its outcome would be dreadful. How likely is such an uprising? One would like to think that it is not very likely, but that might be excessively optimistic. My belief is that if an eventual uprising is to be avoided, a coordinated effort must be made to initiate a Ghandi-esque campaign of passive resistance, Atlas Shrugged style: simply stop. Stop all economic activity to the greatest degree possible. Stock up and stay home for as long as possible. Empty your bank accounts, sell securities, hold only cash or precious metals as money. Break the system.

Or if this course of action does not appeal, leave the country for one that is less likely to undergo upheaval.

Consider this for 2010: the Southern Cone, the Catacombs for those who would be free and "sustainable."

Posted by Gildas at 00:08 AM 0 comments