Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has issued a new report (PDF) asserting that the Early Asian Immigrants (incorrectly referred to as “Native” Americans) are hit the hardest by “climate-induced weather extremes”. I’ll leave aside the obvious problems with that fanciful claim, and the oddity of the idea of “climate-induced weather” whatever that means, to look at the NWF’s proposed solution to their imaginary problem.
Their solution? Well, their brilliant plan is that everyone but the Immigrants should pony up some money to give to the Immigrants.
Now, the history of the Early Asian Immigrants is a sad and tragic one. They were cheated, lied to, killed indiscriminately, and their culture and ways were denigrated and often destroyed.
The response of the US Government, after many years, was to give the remaining tribes of Immigrants their own nations. These are sovereign areas with their own leaders, where many US laws do not apply. Me, I’d give just about anything to be able to write my own laws, and not have to obey some US laws. But I don’t get to.
Now, however, the NWF wants to change the rules. They want to alter the laws so that the separate Immigrant nations can not only be sovereign and independent and run casinos and not be subject to various state laws, but they can also suck up tax money paid by people who live in my nation. As an example of what they want to change, they say:
Indian [sic] Tribes are also excluded —– because of statutes, regulations, or practice —– from dozens of federal natural resource programs that provide assistance to states, local governments, and other entities.
Well … yes indeed, they are excluded from using my tax money for a host of things, and for very good reasons. That’s the price they pay for independence and sovereignty, that they don’t get treated the same as other US citizens, or like a State, or like a local government—because they aren’t any of those things, they are a sovereign nation with all that implies. For example, I can’t go on the reservation and do what I want, that’s the Immigrant national land. Immigrants don’t have to follow a variety of laws, and rightly so. And I don’t get any money from tribal funds that they are getting from Immigrant casinos, casinos that are illegal for me to operate.
So while I definitely feel for the Immigrants, who historically have suffered unimaginably, they can’t have it both ways. If they want to be full participants in the American rush to have the US government reimburse them for every imaginary problem, they can’t also be exempt from various laws and State taxes and some even from Federal taxes and get to have their own nations. If they want the full panoply of dubious benefits that the rest of the citizens get, sorry, they’ve got to become just like me, subject to all of the nonsense which us Late European Immigrants have to put up with.
Or they could just pay for the things that they need from their casino takings … which were $7,300,000,000 ($7.3 billion with a “b”) just in California alone in 2009, and $26,400,000,000 nationally, and on which in many states they paid no state taxes. I say they should use their own money for that kind of quixotic quest. If they want to use my taxes to fight imaginary menaces, well, they should have to pay taxes just like I do and be subject to the same idiotic rules that constrain me.
In any case, if the Immigrants are entitled to my tax money, it seems only fair that in return I should be able to open my own casino. But I don’t need to make billions. If I can only make a few million dollars from my casino, I assure you that I can protect myself against the worst that man-made warming can do, and save the Government a pile of money in the process … plus I’ll pay all applicable taxes on my takings.
It’s a win-win kind of deal.
w.
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UPDATE:
Willis has free reign to publish here, however this is not an article (in its present form) I would have published if consulted. Once published, I can’t put the cat back in the bag. – Anthony
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A note from the author. Anthony has most graciously given me the room to write here without censorship or interference or suggestions of any type,and has my great thanks for the freedom. As such, I ask that everyone be clear that what I write is mine, and what Anthony writes is his. He is passionate about his causes, as am I about mine. I thought long and hard about this before I posted it, as I do with all of my posts, but even more so because it is a touchy subject. I re-wrote it several times to try to make it clearer and clearer.
Now, I could have just said “Ooooh, too hot to handle” and picked a less controversial subject … but if Anthony and I and all the guest posters did that, this would be the most boring blog on the planet.
All I ask is that people quote my words when they object, because most people are treating this subject like a web-based Rorschach test, and reading into it all of their hopes, fears, and prejudices.
Again, my thanks to Anthony for his marvelous blog,
w.
What is a “false correlation,” Smokey?
They are correlated. Proving causation would be difficult, but the fact is that the progress I described ran concurrent with the programs I described.
That’s a good one. If a better argument could be made, why didn’t you make it, instead of just informing us that one “could be made.?”
Really?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TJgxEwPv7RI/AAAAAAAAObs/AU8XbvZCSdo/s1600/poverty.jpg
Compare the % of people in poverty, comparatively, in the different years. Multiply that % difference times the US population in each intervening year, and them your results for each year together how many fewer people were in poverty in total (for one year) during that period of time.
Perhaps the hundreds of millions of fewer people living in poverty over those 45 years or so is not significant to you. Causality is hard to prove – but the fact of hundreds of millions fewer people living in poverty is of significance to me. That you’d so easily dismiss hundreds of millions fewer Americans living in poverty says a lot about you, Smokey.
Quite a lot.
Uhmm ……….Josh, that’s the silliest argument I’ve heard in some time. We’re paying more now than ever to combat poverty and we can’t get 3% lower than what we were in 1967? Worse, we can’t maintain it! And you believe we couldn’t do better than that? Josh, we could do better than that by daily filling up a truck full of money and shoveling it out as we drove down the road.
More, now that we’ve discussed correlation, have you correlated the periods of decrease in poverty with any national economic indicators? Your graph reinforces the posit Smokey made. Poverty goes down with economic growth, poverty goes up with economic recession………. govt spending? Poverty continues at the same rate, +/- 3% in spite of continuous increased spending. Conclusion? Poverty is best combated by encouraging economic activity and growth and isn’t dependent upon the largess of the government with other peoples money. The point of diminishing returns was likely exceeded in 1973. Thanks for the graph……..
James Sexton,
You are right, we’re in way too many wars. Our first President warned us about foreign entanglements, but the anti-war movement is nowhere to be found. Where’s Code Pink? Where are the campus demonstrations? Obama is heavily bombing Libya every day using NATO. Where in NATO’s remit does it say regime change is its mission?
…*crickets*…
As Josh makes clear, war and everything else is made into a Left/Right issue these days, mostly by the Left. And by “Right” I don’t mean as in Nazi Germany, which wasn’t right wing at all. It was as Leftist as Josh. The true right wing believes in the original Constitution and Bill of Rights [and some subsequent amendments, on a case by case basis]. The Left’s bloated government has brought us the current economic disaster. Their proposed solution? More deficit spending! QE-3, comin’ up.
Today’s pampered academics and overpaid government drones are no different than Stalin’s or Hitler’s leftists. They want ever bigger goverrnment. Actually, they crave dictatorship. The facts speak for themselves. And they cry the same crocodile tears over the “poor.” It’s simply a rhetorical tactic to make taxpayers feel guilty, and it says plenty about their lack of ethics. Truth be told, they don’t give a damn about the poor. Libs are notorious for their personal stinginess when it comes to charity.
Speaking of leftist agendas, I said I’d bet a month’s pay that Joshua is either a government drone or an academic. Offer’s still open. I’ve got these folks pegged.
Since my great great grandma was Paiute does this mean I can gamble with less taxation? Maybe a dna test is in order to figure out my take?
Damn, I almost forgot…… currently, we’ve about 300 million in this nation…..every man, woman, and child. Given the graph, 15% is more than the people in poverty(we all knew this, but graph illustrate it to the people that don’t get numbers)………or the people in poverty is less than 45 million. That’s a lot of people! If we were to give each one $40,000 …..every man, woman, and child…. that would come to…… figuring…….gusintas…..ciphering….calculating……bleep!! burp!!….thinking……… got it!!!! $1,800,000,000,000 For those of us that don’t like to deal in zeroes, that’s 1.8 trillion dollars. That is 1/4’s less than what we just unnecessarily raised our debt limit to. Given that we’re already paying over a $trillion/yr to combat poverty, we could give every man woman and child about $70,000 ….. or for a family of 4, they could receive almost $300,000 dollars. We could, if we chose, effectively end poverty in one fell swoop! And we could have done it for over the last 30 years any time we desired.
Josh, it never was about combating poverty. It was always about keeping people poor and the realization that there will always be the poor with us because some are incorrigibly poor. Why not buy them to do our bidding? Because the feds beat us to it. Heck! They encourage poverty!
Smokey says:
August 10, 2011 at 8:02 pm
Speaking of leftist agendas, I said I’d bet a month’s pay that Joshua is either a government drone or an academic. Offer’s still open. I’ve got these folks pegged.
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I was kinda hoping he was just young and idealistic. Its getting to the point to where it bothers me that more and more are so far out there, that there’s no coming back for them……. I wonder what part of “it isn’t sustainable” that they don’t get?
Willis, please accept my apologies for getting the spelling wrong on your name. It’s a combination of typo and a lack of familiarity with non-english names.
However here is a selection of the terms you have used against others posters perfectly reasonable posts
.“I am quite tired of people like you” ( addressed to a Native Indian)
“You seem rabidly upset”
“Puerile”
There are many others, but you get the picture.
You insult and attack in a particularly nasty way many posters who have made perfectly reasonable comments, while pushing your own racist agenda to devalue the special role of an ancient American people ,and then you whine and complain because of a typo in your name.
I must confess your hypocrisy is truly breathtaking.
You’ll note, I have the insight to apologise, I know when I have committed an error. Do you also have that understanding? I do hope so. To be honest in my view you have probably done more damage to the reputation of this site than all the other warmist sites combined.
Pleased with yourself?
Jeff Alberts says:
August 9, 2011 at 7:59 am
springer: “Drugs are for people who can’t handle reality. Reality is for people who can’t handle drugs. ”
alberts: Or, Reality is for people who don’t see a need to alter it.
Or drugs are for people who don’t fear altered states of perception.
So may I presume you’ve never taken an aspirin to dull the reality of a headache? If you have then you’ve seen a need to alter your perceptions and used a drug to alter it.
I reminded of the old saw about the guy who asked a woman if she’d sleep with him for a million dollars and she said yes. Then he asks if she’d sleep with him for ten dollars and she replies, certainly not, I’m not a prostitute. Then he says, we’ve already established what you are, we are just negotiating the price.
I put to you, Mr. Albert, that you are already use drugs to alter your perceptions and we are merely arguing about the type and circumstance where it’s acceptable to use them. A lot of people get headaches from interacting with uptight authoritarian self-righteous asshats and instead of taking an aspirin they smoke a joint or pour a glass of wine. I don’t really care which they choose even though I recognize that aspirin and especially alcohol are far more dangerous when abused.
James Sexton says:
August 10, 2011 at 9:30 pm
“or the people in poverty is less than 45 million. That’s a lot of people! If we were to give each one $40,000”
Please let me know before the checks go out in the mail. I’ll be wanting to adjust my investment portfolio to increase my holdings in companies that make cigarettes and mobile homes.
James Sexton says:
August 10, 2011 at 8:02 pm
“Uhmm ……….Josh, that’s the silliest argument I’ve heard in some time. We’re paying more now than ever to combat poverty and we can’t get 3% lower than what we were in 1967?”
“Poverty” isn’t the same. I know a woman who manages a surgical practice. Many of their patients are on Medicaid. She remarked to me the other day about how many of them drive up in late model luxury SUVs and wonders how they can afford them and still qualify for Medicaid.
The number in poverty hasn’t changed but what defines the conditions of poverty surely has.
Smokey – what took you so long to go Godwin?
James –
Multiply that 3% each year (for many of those years, of course, it was a much greater %), and you get hundreds of millions fewer people living in poverty for an extended period of time. That may seem insignificant to you – but I consider it quite significant.
In general, of course it does. I would never doubt that for one second. No doubt, there are a myriad of relevant causal variables. One might suppose, for example, that greater tax revenue during times of economic prosperity mean more money available for combating poverty (thus “causing” less poverty). But on a larger scale, the graph shows a dramatic drop in poverty rates concurrent with the largest expansion in social service spending in the history of the planet.
Compare the other chart to this chart of economic growth:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/economics/ChartImg.axd?i=chart_a5b271658d8b40f998bb20e3f42702e9_43.png&g=1ee1e588a74c4a6798e65d62b1b6a439
When you can provide some actual evidence of a causal link between social service spending and an increase in poverty, as has been asserted numerous times on this thread, please do provide it. Without such evidence, all you have is a supposition of an inverse causal relationship that stands in direct opposite to easily observed correlations. The point is how much poverty rates would be different on top of the variations that take place in step with the state of the economy. Looking at the chart we can see that prior to a massive growth in safety net programs, poverty rates were much higher.
??? Can you explain this comment? The syntax has me confused.
A diminished rate of return does not mean a negative rate of return. Further, to assess the rate of return you need to do more calculation to match spending on poverty alleviation against inflation, population growth, etc. You’d also need to control for the amount that the poverty rate would have, arguably, been higher absent poverty prevention programs, as well as for the deeper level of hardship that would have, arguably, occurred absent poverty alleviation programs.
Arguably, if we hadn’t been spending the amount we currently spend on combating poverty, the number of people in poverty would be considerably higher – so you need to figure that into your calculations. You can’t simply divide the amount that we’re currently spending by the number currently living in poverty as an accurate critique of the amount that has been spent over previous decades. Further, those who are living in poverty would arguably be dying of hunger and disease at a much greater rate – which also needs to be figured into your calculations. In looking at the poverty rates, we are looking at just one of the relevant metrics. We would also need to look at the (arguably) greater debt we would incur (as a product of greater poverty and greater suffering among the poor) as a society that has determined that, for example, we won’t turn poor people away who turn up at a hospital in need of medical care.
Thanks for explaining, James. I always thought that the people I know that are engaged in providing services to the poor were intending to alleviate suffering due to poverty. Thanks to your post, I now realize that in reality, their intent was, in contrast, to increase suffering due to poverty.
Sorry – that link doesn’t work.
Plug the dates in yourself, here:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth
Dave Springer says:
August 11, 2011 at 8:29 am
James Sexton says:
August 10, 2011 at 8:02 pm
“Uhmm ……….Josh, that’s the silliest argument I’ve heard in some time. We’re paying more now than ever to combat poverty and we can’t get 3% lower than what we were in 1967?”
……..
The number in poverty hasn’t changed but what defines the conditions of poverty surely has.
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Agreed, I recall when one color TV in a household was representative of wealth. Today, one could have one in every room all having 4ft screens …. PCs, game consoles, Iphones and pads…. and still be considered below the poverty line. I believe we could alleviate some burden on the working class, by removing some of these from the rolls of our largess thereby ensuring money to be available to the ones in true need, and more money for the working class as to encourage economic growth……. I know….. its a radical thought. For some reason, people have allowed that type of thinking to be vilified and marginalized. Ones who make such a wild assertion are often labeled racist, or worse!——– Identified as a “gasp” TEA party person!! (Say it ain’t so, Joe!!)
It’s interesting how legitimate ideas can be framed to look like they’re bizarre or even evil.
Joshua says:
“Smokey – what took you so long to go Godwin?”
That’s a lame response. I was calling a spade a spade, and that’s all Joshua can think of?
In fact, all of Joshua’s “solutions” result in the conclusion that Big Government is the answer. But those arguments are circular, and assume that the mountains of tax money constantly shoveled to the “poor” [with legions of bureaucrats and other government bureaucrats taking their hefty cut] somehow hasn’t hobbled the productive sector of the economy. It has, enormously. And there is no proof whatever that the huge amount of wealth confiscated from society’s producers has benefitted “the poor” in the long run.
Again, it’s a circular argument, but the answer from the Left is always the same: bigger and bigger government, with more and more bureaucracy. Obviously Joshua likes it, being one of the drones who collects wealth instead of producing it [I’ll admit that I’m wrong if he states that he is neither in government, or part of the tax-supported education industry.]
Joshua is arguing for ever bigger government by crying crocodile tears for “the poor.” But where are those starving multitudes with distended bellies and broomstick arms and legs? Not in America – where over-feeding among “the poor” is endemic. Big government critters like Joshua won’t admit it, but they want to keep as many people on the dole as possible because it serves their purposes. The UK has a permanent underclass, spanning three or more generations on the dole, completely beholden to the government for their meager handouts. Most are able-bodied and could work. But it serves certain interests to keep them unemployed.
The best and most effective pro-growth solution for the economy is significantly less government. Government is a huge drain on productivity. It drains away wealth for little return. Certain government functions such as the military, the courts, law enforcement, and fair, across the board regulation ensuring fair competition and safety are fine. But that can easily be done with less than half the current bureaucracy.
Finally, in America the bottom economic quintile turns over in well under a decade. That means that if someone is “poor” today, it is very likely that they won’t be in the bottom quintile ten years from now. But the bigger the government, the more likely those in the bottom quintile will be kept there because it serves the purposes of some in the upper quintiles to keep a permanent underclass, deprived of opportunity. We can see it happening now, and it benefits the big government drones that benefit from a permanent poor underclass, dependent on Big Government for its meager handouts.
Hmm, I wonder how often you ever gave the Native Americans a thought before this Willis? Before they got themselves a casino and stopped having to be the stereotyped losers the winners has degraded them to..
Surely you don’t really begrudge them this after all they lost?
http://198.104.132.205/~blogmaps/2011/08/09/indian-removal-and-the-trail-of-tears/
Same old, same old:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
“Although the five Indian nations had made earlier attempts at resistance, many of their strategies were non-violent. One method was to adopt Anglo-American practices such as large-scale farming, Western education, and slave-holding. This earned the nations the designation of the “Five Civilized Tribes.” They adopted this policy of assimilation in an attempt to coexist with settlers and ward off hostility. But it only made whites jealous and resentful.”
But look what they gave you –
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/
Pity you Americans couldn’t keep it – the US constituion is now the same junk the rest of us have. And, you were conned by Woodow Wilson and the Bwankers in 1913 in giving away control over the US money supply, and Willis – don’t all your taxes go to paying the interest on the money printed by these Bwankers, so what are you complaining about?
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Wil says:
August 8, 2011 at 8:41 pm
Native American tribes showed they were comprised of four distinct mtDNA haplogroups called A, B, C, and D. This means that the Native Americans are derived from four different lineages.These haplogroups were also found in native populations in Central and South America. Utter mtDNA research utilizing ancient remains recovered in the Americas validated these four haplogroups. Three of these haplogroups, A, C, and D are found primarily in Siberian Asia. The B haplogroup, however, is found only in aboriginal groups in Southeast Asia. China, Japan, Melanesia, and Polynesia confirming a South Pacific and Japanese Migration.
Are the Hopi in the B group? According to their own traditions,IIRC, they arrived in the bottom south west of the Americas, around 22/23 thousand years ago – and over the time moved north.
Hoser says:
August 8, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Here’s a pretty good conventional description of human migration. They leave out the sea route of migration, which could include aboriginals to South America perhaps 20,000 years ago, and Europeans to North America possibly 12,000 years
I think I recall the Hopi saying that they came by ‘stepping stones’, that is, island hopping.
And by the way Willis, they call the Native Americans the Red Man.
Here you are White man Willis – what the Red wants from you: http://www.aimovement.org/ggc/trailofbrokentreaties.html
Climate change according to the Hopi – http://www.ahastories.com/hopiprophecy.html
Gareth Phillips says:
August 10, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Thanks, Gareth. Most aboriginal cultures have a name for themselves. In many cases these names translate as “THE people”, or the “first people”, or the “first nation”, or “the real people”, or something of the sort. But it’s like the old joke about “How many legs does a cow have if you call a tail a leg?”
The answer, of course, is “Four … because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
I’m sure you can see the relevance to the subject under discussion.
Although there is still a bit of scientific dispute about the question, most scientists agree that humans are native to Africa and nowhere else, and dispersed from there at various times. Are the Vikings native to Iceland? No, they emigrated there about 700 years ago. Are the Hawaiians native to Hawaii? No, they emigrated there five hundred years before that. Are the Maori native to New Zealand? Actually, they emigrated to New Zealand about the time the Vikings moved to Iceland …
My point is simple. The fact that the Maori moved to New Zealand about the time the Vikings moved to Iceland shows that the “First People” kind of claims are just a convenient historical fiction. I have no problem with the Treaty of Whangarei, it was a brilliant move on the part of the Maori, and like all treaties I think it should be honored in the letter and the spirit … but the Maori have no more claim to be called New Zealand “natives” than the Vikings have of being Iceland “natives”.
w.
Gareth Phillips says:
August 11, 2011 at 1:40 am
Apology accepted, although my name is an english name and that was not any kind of typo I’ve ever seen. In addition you had mis-spelled my name twice before, and you know the old line about “once is chance, twice is coincidence, third time is enemy action”. I said nothing the first time. I said nothing the second time. By the third time I was tired of what I saw as a puerile trick, and said so. If I was wrong, so be it … but when you do it three times, Gareth, you must know that people will suspect your motives.
Gareth, you did seem rabidly upset, and you wrote post after post without explaining what it was I had said that made you so upset. Now perhaps you weren’t upset at all, perhaps you were pretending to be. But that is how you seemed to me. So why should I not comment on that, and how is it hypocritical to do so?
My first statement you quote above was that I was tired of people claiming to be “native” Americans, when they are nothing of the sort. Now, I could have said I was overjoyed that he was another person in a long line making that claim … but then that would have been hypocritical, wouldn’t it.
And yes, I called your messing with my name a “puerile trick”. In your first posting you called what I wrote “nonsense” and “tosh”, without even inquiring whether you had badly misunderstood my point (and you had). You continued to do that for post after post, repeatedly mis-spelling my name along the way. I thought it was intentional. You say it was not, and I accept that.
You seem to be under the illusion that controversy is bad, or that I should be all sweetness and light and rub your tummy and blow in your ear to make this a good web site. I don’t do that, I never have, and it’s still a great web site. I’ve been skewering fools here since I wrote my first post and will continue to do so. People don’t seem to mind it, actually, because I’m honest about it. I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not, they know I’ll defend my views, they just grab some popcorn and a beer to watch the madness unfold.
Gareth, when you open up a discussion by calling someone’s work “nonsense” and “tosh”, without quoting what you object to and without any citation or backup for your claims, and you follow it by repeatedly mis-spelling my name and implying that I’m racist … do you really expect people to treat you like an adult member of the discussion?
w.
Willis, our names, our identity, and our heritage are precious to us. That is possibly why you are so upset at my misspelling your name. I accept your anger. My name is also commonly misspelled, I have learned to live with it, though I agree, it is always irritating. That unintended insult against one person is regrettable, for which I have apologised.
Can you imagine therefore how your same treatment of your fellow citizens has gone down? Or are they not entitled to the same respect? Is it OK for you to be angry at the depreciation of your name, but OK to to mischievously undermine the heritage and identity of the most ancient of your fellow citizens? Can you see the dissonance? Maybe not, but I live in hope.
We both agree that this is a great website. You think I am rabid, not adult, bear brained and a host of other odd descriptions (whatever that means) and, for my part I think you are subtly racist. (you tick all the boxes) However maybe we are going to have to agree to disagree with each other and focus on our areas of agreement, i.e. the subject of Climate change, and incidentally, in the interests of the wellbeing of our discussion group.
ps. To be adult enough to apologise is the mark of the adult. It would be good to hear you say it, it would indicate you understand the issue, it would make amends to many of your fellow citizens, but I won’t hold my breath. Your call Willis, do you have the emotional resources to step up to the line? or will you retreat to the bunker?
pps I lived in the UK all my life, and I have never met anyone called Willis and neither has anyone in the pub this evening. Apparently it is a Teutonic name which emigrated to the New World from Germany in the 1800s It seems to have passed us by in the UK, but sounds good for all of that.
Myrrh says:
August 11, 2011 at 12:28 pm (Edit)
I suspect point 14 might be a bit difficult … look, I agree that the people who were here when we got here were treated abysmally, shabbily, criminally, and often lethally … but then in many cases, they had treated the people they had defeated and driven out to give them what they call “ancestral lands” even more criminally, oftentimes driving them off of their lands without giving them treaties and reservations and the like. A good chunk of the time, “ancestral lands” seems to mean “my ancestors killed someone else’s ancestors to get it”.
I also agree that the treaties should all be respected both in the letter and the spirit. I used to get into big fights about this one when fishing commercially in the Pacific Northwest at the time the treaty terms on Salmon were re-instituted, giving the locals half the catch. All my commercial fishing friends thought it was a crime. I just said “We made a deal with them, and I don’t like it any more than you that we’re losing half the fish, but we have to keep the deal”. That’s my perspective on it, that we cannot right historical wrongs, but we can and should abide by our historical agreements.
However, my point is that despite your statement that that’s what the “Red” wants from me, it’s not all they want. They also want to change the historical agreements to give them some of my money to fight an imaginary menace. I’m not up for that at all.
Let’s see. “Cobwebs in the sky” means contrails. I suppose if they’d said “Cobwebs on the ground” you’d say they meant the road system. I find such allegories no more convincing than Nostradamus. Predictions of the “end times” are a dime a dozen, and (like the recent “end of the world” claims) seem to be always receding into the future.
w.
Myrrh says:
August 11, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Thanks, Myrrh. I’ve thought of them lots of times, they were my heroes growing up because I lived in the forest and they were kings of the forest lore. Since then, I’ve lived next to them, worked with them, played in a rock band comprised of four Indians (their term) and myself, and fished commercially with them over the last forty-five years or … so what’s your point?
w.
Gareth Phillips says:
August 11, 2011 at 2:53 pm
Thanks, Gareth. If telling the truth (e.g that the “Native” New Zealands Maori are no more native to New Zealand than the Viking are native to Iceland) is undermining the Maori’s “heritage and ancestry”, then it wasn’t really heritage and ancestry to start with, it was an illusion.
Are they entitled to respect as you ask? In my world, no one is “entitled” to respect, it is earned (and easily lost), so I’d have to say no.
I learned a while ago that while local customs are often foolishly venerated and respected by people such as you and I from outside the local culture, the folks that live in that culture may have other ideas. I learned it while working in the Solomon Islands, where I was involved in a project called in Pijin English “Kipim Kastom Blong Iu”, meaning “Keep the Customs that Belong to You”, or keep your ancestral customs strong. Who could argue with that?
One day on the street I was talking to a woman from Savo Island, and she read me the riot act about our program. Her point was simple—in their ancient customs, women were rated somewhere below pigs and above dogs. “We were just escaping from that on Savo, thanks to the white man’s influence, and now your damn ‘Kipim Kastom Blong Iu’ project is encouraging the men to treat us like their slaves again, because the white man says so … thanks a lot!” And I slunk away in shame.
So I fear I don’t have your automatic reverence and respect for the local customs and the people that practice them that you seem to have. I have learned through bitter experience that respect has to be earned by their actions, not accorded to them because the customs are ancient beyond words, nor because they are “native” to the local area. Neither is sufficient reason for respect.
w.
OK Willis, my point is that your piece came across as sour grapes. But as I said, your gripe that your taxes shouldn’t be going to them is that your taxes go to paying the Bwankers interest on the money they print for you, you’re missing a link in the chain of this. And, if you’re annoyed because you can’t set up a casino, well whose fault is that? You keep confirming that the ‘goverment’ has the right to dictate to you and then you complain.
The net in the sky was communications, telephone, did you miss that bit? There are a surprising amount of prophecies from centuries way before all this which saw it too. That page was a bit difficult to read will find another.
So they knew things would happen. Things would speed up a little bit. There would be a cobweb built around the earth, and people would talk across this cobweb. When this talking cobweb, the telephone, was built around the earth, a sign of life would appear in the east, but it would tilt and bring death. It would come with the sun. http://www.ausbcomp.com/redman/hopi_prophecy.htm
From which, since this is titled “climate and early asian immigrants”, ah, this doesn’t have all the info, and the link to the full page comes up empty. OK, here: http://www.seekeronline.org/journals/y2008/jun08.htm
Another Hopi prophecy warns that nothing should be brought back from the Moon — obviously anticipating the Apollo 11 mission that returned with samples of lunar basalt.
If this was done, the Hopi warned, the balance of natural and universal laws and forces would be disturbed, resulting in earthquakes, severe changes in weather patterns, and social unrest. All these things are happening today, though of course not necessarily because of Moon rocks.
The Hopi also predicted that when the “heart” of the Hopi land trust is dug up, great disturbances will develop in the balance of nature, for the Hopi holy land is the microcosmic image of the entire planet; any violations of nature in the Four Corners region will be reflected and amplified all over the Earth.
CO2 not to blame! It’s the pesky moon rocks that done it.
Willis – since you think treaties should be kept, what about the point 10 in what the Red man wants? How big a migration would take place if land treaties were honoured?
I don’t know if this treaty was ever broken by the White man, but an example of the kind made – http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/che0008.htm [from a list http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/toc.htm ]
And a short background on the Bwankers takeover:
http://www.jimbernard.org/gpage16.html
Aha, ’twas Benjamin Franklin who gave the game away… http://www.planetization.org/prosperity.htm
I think I recall this more or less correctly, the taxation system on commerce goes back to maritime law and that is on directly middle men transactions which don’t have a step of added value – so someone buying goods and then selling them on at profit without any change in the goods is liable for tax, but not the man who buys flour and makes bread and then sells the bread, which is straight personal earnings for his labour. Although Wilson ‘introduced’ personal tax, it was a) unconstitutional, (confirmed by a previous ruling), and b) not ratified by the correct number of members (because it was rushed through when everyone off on hols or something and told that there wouldn’t be a vote on this until later, and then voting began when the majority had left).
I think the clincher is that you are requested to pay personal tax by the IRS, it is not a demand. A demand would be criminal..
But that’s an ongoing argument, here for the IRS cannot demand payment of personal taxes – http://thematrixhasyou.org/no-tax.html and here for the IRS claiming voluntary doesn’t mean voluntary – http://www.irs.gov/taxpros/article/0%2C%2Cid=159932%2C00.html
But, since the IRS is a private company, a collection arm of the private Federal Reserve, and you don’t have a contract with it directly it can only be voluntary, right? However, I think that once you mark the form in any way whatsover you are agreeing to a possible contract with them, not just by signing which is standard for agreement. So even if you mark the form ‘no contract’ and send it back, you are agreeing that they have a relationship with you but you are disputing it, which is then taken courtwards and you placed in the dock (dock from the maritime, impounding ship).
Hmm, tricky.