11.30.2010

Scanning the news this morning

Interesting times indeed. Of course, the mainstream is flooded with stories about the latest Wikileaks. If you're like me, you're sipping your coffee and smiling, occasionally chuckling, as you read these articles. "First Amendment or Espionage" reads one headline on Drudge Report. "Ecuador offers residency" reads another. Wait, I seem to remember something about them offering amnesty/residency during the last "leak". Ehh, neither here nor there. These aren't the things that really interest me.

Could Wikileaks Revealing Major Bank Secrets Crash the Global Economy?, over at The Market Oracle, however, DOES interest me...A LOT...

Lets just say, I've got my fingers crossed hoping for that one. You could say I'm hoping for doom and gloom. The truth is, I'm just tired of waiting. It's obvious to everyone with "eyes to see" that the current system doesn't work. We're being raped and pillaged from the top down, and it's not going to get any better until it's gotten much worse. My hope is that I'll be there on the other side of the great collapse to help get things right.

And on a more cheerful note, there's this post over at Life After the Oil Crash. I especially enjoyed this snip of the tirade:

"...it’s not just the food that’s killing you, it’s the drugs. If you show any sign of life when you’re young, they’ll put you on Ritalin. Then, when you get old enough to take a good look around, you’ll get depressed, so they’ll give you Prozac. If you’re a man, this will render you chemically impotent, so you’ll need Viagra to get it up. Meanwhile, your steady diet of trans-fat-laden food is guaranteed to give you high cholesterol, so you’ll get a prescription for Lipitor. Finally, at the end of the day, you’ll lay awake at night worrying about losing your health plan, so you’ll need Lunesta to go to sleep."

The whole post/email deals with an interesting proposition: why bother continuing to live in the US? My answer to this is difficult at best. One reason is that, well, let's face it...I'm lazy. Another reason is that I have a lot of debt - student loans, of course. A third reason (this is the one I prefer to think is the most important, though I may be just deluding myself) is that I want to help this country SUCCEED. I'm a patriot in that way. I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the principals of our founding fathers. I want to be there to help bring us, the US, back to wholesome greatness on the other side of the great collapse.

Again, that may be just me deluding myself. It happens.

In other news, we dropped to 16*F last night and I woke up to find my hot water line frozen leading to the bathroom. Going to have to set up some circulation fans back there to keep that from happening again. We were forecasted to drop to 7*F last night, but as suspected, the meteorologists out here don't seem to know their ass from their elbow. Since I moved out here to Albuquerque in August, they've been forecasting temps in sometimes 20* ranges for overnight lows and have been typically 5-10* off from actual temperature forecasts. They hit it pretty close for about a week and a half, starting with the last big cold snap, but guess that's over. Of course, high temps have been being forecasted 5-10*F below actual realized all along.

Question is, has this become the case elsewhere as well, or is it just here?

After moving out here to ABQ/"Duke City", my mother an I were discussing the backwards, nearly retarded way in which things are run out here. It came up that this same thing might have happened EVERYWHERE in the US for all we know. I mean, it was bad before, but early August, right after the transits of Saturn and Mars into Libra, it was like we had entered the Twilight Zone. Of course, we've living off "Old Route 66" since we arrived, so we really might have.

11.29.2010

The "Web Bots" and the November 2010 "Tipping Point"

It was November 6th, only a few weeks ago. My mother, also a full-time RVer, had her check in hand. We were waiting in line at the bank branch in the local grocery store. We couldn't tell at first that something was up, but as we slowly got closer to the counter, we heard a bank clerk say something to a customer about the systems having gone down earlier that day.

What!?!

That's certainly not what we wanted to hear while waiting to cash a check. Moments later, a branch manager made the announcement that because the system had gone down earlier that day, some transactions wouldn't go through. He then made his way through the line, talking with each customer individually. When he got to us, I asked him about what was happening with their system. He told us that there was an outage earlier that day and that since then, some transactions would go through without a problem but others would fail. The whole country, he said, was experiencing the problem - and not just this bank but all the major banks.

Let me tell you, the hairs on the back of my neck couldn't have raised any higher without detaching from the skin!

You see, we were in the middle of the "web bot" predicted "tipping point". If you don't know what a "web bot" is, go google it. It's something I've been watching out of the corner of my eye for years now. The predicted "tipping point", originally forecasted to occur between November 8th and 11th, had me on edge for the week leading up to the 8th-11th window. What's more, I had just learned the day before that the window had been amended to start on the 6th and end on the 14th. Was this the beginning of a bank holiday and the accompanying SHTF scenarios?

We left only $40 in my bank account. Everything else went with us in cash to buy food, water and gas. Better safe than sorry, right?

Upon returning home that day, there was no mention of it in the news. Wish I could say it didn't surprise me, but it did. Silly me, I guess I still hold on to the notion that there is a real media to covering events like this. What was even more astonishing, however, was that I didn't see any mention of it in the alternative media sites. It's like it was a non-event.

When Monday arrived and there was no bank holiday, I breathed a highly cautioned sigh of relief. The world wasn't changing overnight - at least not yet. In fact, Monday seemed fairly uneventful at first glance. The only thing I really noticed was an increase in the tensions over the whole TSA body scanners deal. Nothing truly extraordinary other than the continued surge in gold and silver, with gold breaching $1400/oz and silver moving toward $30/oz in a hurry.

But later on Monday, something awfully amazing took place. The media was reporting a mysterious missile launch off the coast of California! "Wow!" is all I could think.

Is THIS the beginning of the SHTF scenarios?

Days later and still nothing. The California missile launch was being written off as just a jet with accompanying contrail. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

Then there was news of a big NASA announcement scheduled for the 15th dealing with an "exceptional object". "That has to be it," I thought. It's perfect - the "web bot" had predicted a plateau period between the 6th and 14th, with a sudden shift to "release language" on the morning of the 14th. Maybe it was off by a day, right?

Turns out it was just the discovery of a black hole "relatively" close to us - merely 50 million light years away.

And again, nothing to see here folks.

It'd be easy to write this all off as a failed prediction. Normal daily life 1 - Web Bots 0. Nothing huge and/or catastrophic happened. However, looking back, there was a definite shift in the paradigm during that week.

Prior to November 6th, very few Americans had anything to say about those TSA body scanners. Since the 14th, however, it's been non-stop, front-page mainstream fodder. From breast cancer survivors having their prosthetics inspected to old men being covered in urine, to little girls crying about being touched in all the wrong places. It's been all about the overstepping of boundaries, the disease spreading potential, and the harmful radiation. This country went from being effectively silent on issues of privacy, freedom and liberty to screaming at the tops of their lungs about a tyrannical government bent on destroying our last few freedoms in a mere week.

The snowball definitely started there. The student protests all over Europe continued, but were getting more and more violent with each passing day. The European bank run, scheduled for Decemeber 7th, was sparked by Eric Cantona's YouTube video right about the same time. Also, during the same time frame, the "Crash JP Morgan, Buy Silver" campaign began. All these coincident occurrences - it can't be a coincidence.

Anywho, I'm set to sit back and watch the "tipping point" evolve, for better or worse. Lesson learned: most big events don't just happen, they build up over time. Should be an interesting few months at the very least.