Indiaman in the Thames is by William Knell (1801-1875), a leading British maritime painter. The picture depicts the storm-battered Indiaman just returned from the eastern empire, flanked by Royal Navy ships of the line.
. . . . .
Detroit
As you pass the city limits a blanket of gloom, neglect and cheapness descends. The buildings are shabbier, the paint is faded. The businesses, where they exist, are thrift shops and pawn shops or wretched groceries where the goods are old and tired. Finding somewhere to have breakfast, normally easy in any American city, involves a long hunt. ‘God bless Detroit', says one billboard, just beside another offering the alternative solution: liquor.
Peter Hitchens, dailymail.co.uk
Detroit is our Atlantis, largely spoken of in the past tense, reverently, as we speak of the dead. Makers of apocalypse movies use its corpse as a ready-made set, unending industrial ruins, abandoned and serially trashed neighborhoods
, and moldering urban treasures. Detroit itself is gone. Something else squats in its place.
Ol' Remus has done time in some dangerous and scary places, East St. Louis and Juarez and Port-au-Prince come to mind, but Detroit is in a class by itself. He remembers when it was different, the "before" of the before-and-after. He also remembers his fear in the "after" when it came time to drive out of the rental lot and take his chances. He knows what happened to Detroit, he saw it happen. For those who saw it, no explanation is necessary. For those who didn't, no amount of explaining is enough. It's understandable, the truth was bound, gagged and thrown down the cellar steps. It's still there.
We Shall Overcome wasn't understood as a dewey-eyed ideal in Detroit, it was understood as a blatant threat and license for violent aggression. And aggression there was. Noncombatants started leaving after the 1967 riots and, as it went on, literally without end, fully half the population self-evacuated. Since the year 2000, another twenty-five per cent have left. A quarter of Detroit's 140 square miles is deserted outright. Much of what's left makes mere squalor look good.
Not usually mentioned by the ideologues, because it doesn't fit their liberation narrative, the rush for the exits included professional and middle class blacks, people any viable community would welcome. The only option for these families was to sell their homes for whatever they could get in a free-fall market and escape as if from Pompeii or Genghis Khan.
Nobody stood up for Detroit's true dispossessed, the people who built the city and kept it going. Quite the opposite, accusations and insults were heaped on their heads. So they got out. While fleeing they were threatened and taunted as bigots and criminals. Middle class blacks were rebuked as cowardly turncoats for "abandoning an opportunity to build a new Detroit based on social justice" and other claptrap. Escapees are still blamed, even at this distance in time. Absolution is always on offer however, currently by way of pro bono heavy maintenance on the city's neglected infrastructure. A generation later those who bought in still think themselves morally superior to those who decamped and replicated the former Detroit elsewhere. This, all by itself, explains a lot.
Collectivists and supremacists and social engineering fops took control under the reign of Mayor Coleman Young, a twenty-year carnival of corruption, extortion and excess. It continues to this day. With forty years of rule, top to bottom, it's reasonable to conclude the outcome we see was the outcome intended. A breakthrough mea culpa is unlikely, one may search Detroit all day and not find the militants who brought it about, they're busy liberating other places. What you will find is ruins on a staggering scale, genuine civil collapse and marauding gangs. Detroit has been the murder capital or a strong contender for most of this time, but cities in their pre-scorched-earth phase are offering spirited competition , perhaps because they're target-rich by comparison. Look for an appeal to the rules committee.
City Council proceedings most nearly resemble the reading of a will to contentious heirs. Having little to do beyond allocate found money, it beclowns itselffreely. Their supporters having no higher expectations than their critics, entertainment rises to a major obligation. As a general proposition, and to be as charitable as the facts allow, they're short term clever and long term stupid.
As the city became more Diverse—now at 84% and closing fast on perfection—academic standings fell as if out a tenth-story window. At present they're the lowest in the country, and accelerating. Odds are Detroit high school graduates can't read their diploma or write a coherent sentence. Nor could their School Board president. When reproached he presented this deficiency as evidence of authentic solidarity, an argument which defies refutation. The schools themselves reprise trench warfare; much noise, many casualties, no gain. Sexual maturity appears at age nine or ten, homicidal violence somewhat earlier, hard drugs only a little later. Among the teaching staff, desertion is more common than retirement, and more understandable. Those who stay exhibit trauma of the sort treated at veteran's hospitals.
Formerly known for its affluence and sturdy communities Detroit is now a virtually unpolicedholding pen supported by what amounts to foreign aid. And the check had better not be late or short of expectations—the term of art being "fully funded". No payoff, no peace. We shouldn't wonder why Detroit is the model aspired to by community organizers at similar venues. Trust fund kids may be incrementally better off but the principle is the same: they'll be fed, clothed—costumed actually, housed, utilitied, schooled, automobiled and cell phoned at no cost to themselves. At intervals they'll be vouchered and class action bonused, to 'keep hope alive' one imagines. In return for being freed of adult responsibility, their sponsors ask only that they not burn the place down all at once, for appearance's sake, and so it is Detroit proper still stands, or near enough. But that's about all it does.
Tracts of once attractive commercial buildings are now shells open to the air, inhabited by birds and rats, mold and weeds, dreary memorials to what was and could have been, a puzzle awaiting future archeologists. Miles of former middle class neighborhoods have reverted to grasslands dotted with the occasional swayback or burned out house slowly sagging to the ground. Imagine a movie of Detroit's history stopped at a freeze-frame of 1970, then run backwards on fast rewind. The reversion is plainly visible in satellite photos. Still they blather about the place being reanimated. Perhaps they've put Doctor Frankenstein on the case.
The city is sinking back into the deep forests and grassy plains that were here before Europeans ever came to North America. What buildings are left are seldom used for their original purpose. A once-grand bank is a sweet shop. Sordid-looking bars sit alongside the chapels of obscure religious sects. There are whole schools with no children to attend them.
Peter Hitchens, dailymail.co.uk
They sang We Shall Overcome. And so they did. The sack of Detroit brought the whole region to outright penury. Some time ago the average house in suburban Detroit was valued at about the price of a very used car. They may be free now, perhaps with the purchase of a toaster. What income there is comes largely from the poverty industry, make-work such as training centers for imaginary jobs, the endless
"renaissance" scam and similar bowerbird antics, lavish federal financing, along with a scattering of legitimate businesses of the irreducibly indispensable or utterly fatuous sorts, with pretty much nothing in between. Redistribution of public funds at street level is routinely handled by community organizations and other quasi-official criminal enterprises. Social justice has arrived. Only bad juju—meaning you know who—keeps it from stunning success, it's said. State supervision is in the works, that the insolvent may better invoice the bankrupt one supposes.
Detroit is the land version of the Titanic. Being more accessible, the wreckage is looted, cut up for scrap or plowed under with real efficency. The place is as close to the endpoint of urban collapse as we're likely to see short of a near-extinction event. It, and places like it, are to be actively avoided. Not avoided "if". Avoided period. Should the SHTF and its feeding tubes withdrawn, avoiding Detroit will take on a new meaning. Until then, it's a useful
worst-case benchmark
for analyzing, predicting and calibrating the ongoing collapse of its sister cities.
Ash cakes
A story from outten the hills
Winter up in the hills is livened up each year with friendly competition in the annual Cook-Off. Ol' Stubb runs the event from his Necessaries & Sundries Emporium to raise awareness—a phrase he saw in a pamphlet for National Crawdaddy Week—for local cooking. This year's cook-off attracted a goodly crowd, like bees around a cider mill. There was fine food in every direction, and nowhere did we hear lah-de-dah stuff like "presented on a bed of", or "medley" or "medallions". We have out standards.
The judges picked three winning recipes that add up to a well-balanced meal fit for hod carriers, tin knockers, day trappers and other solid citizens. First off is the entree, scrumptious Stuffed Possum
Flambé from perennial winner Miss Alde Long down Mud Run Road. She won hands down last year too with her Fillet of Woodchuck With Garlic Sauce.
And what's stuffed possum without ashcake to go with it? Audie B. Schotte from down Gooden Hollow used her family recipe to put up a winning batch. Miss Audie allows as how hickory ashes work best, 'though some say apple wood, but it's generally agreed don't use hemlock or dimension lumber from ol' Stubb on account there'll be a resin taste to 'em.
Here's her winning recipe:
Ashcake
A Gooden Hollow Delight
by Audie B. Schotte
2 cups white cornmeal
Boiling water
A teaspoon of salt
Some lard
Ashes, good'n hot
Here's what you do. First, mix up the cornmeal and the salt in a bowl. Then slowly stir in boiling water a bit at a time until it makes a stiff dough. Then mix it thoroughly. Cover the bowl and set it aside to cool for an hour or so. Or until it's cool, natch.
Then grease up the dough a bit with a touch of lard and hand-shape it into flat round-cakes about as thick as yer little finger and as big around as the palm of yer hand.
Spread the cakes out on the hearth. Let 'em dry a few minutes, then cover 'em thick with sizzlin' hot ashes and let 'em bake about a quarter-hour or until they firm up. Some folks cover the cakes with oak leaves before puttin' on the ashes, others think this showy or overly fastidious. Brush off the ashes—some folks use a little water to clean 'em, and they're ready to eat.
Finally, Ann Sewforth from up Roblyns Hill won with a Steamed Okra delight that had the judges puckerin' up for more.
Ol' Remus deploys these prize-winning recipes when entertaining foreign guests, you know, folks from over the next county with diverse notions for yer ol' Woodpile Report Breaking Eyewitness Opinion Service. It doesn't hurt to exercise his cosmopolitan side now and again.
Duffy Cobblesworth
Cousin Ezekiel has Chapter Four of his new tale for you, Duffy Cobblesworth, posted at Stories from outten the hills
. . . . .
World War II poster, 1945
The Department of Homeland Security is interested in a camera package that can peek in on almost four square miles of American territory for long, long stretches of time, says Spencer Ackerman in this article at Wired's Danger Room. The details are chilling. Related article from the Washington Post: Cities deploying aerial drones and what they can do.
East Germany's Stasi saw it this way:
Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori paints three-dimensional goldfish using a complex process of poured resin. The fish are painted meticulously, layer by layer, the sandwiched slices revealing slightly more about each creature, similar to the function of a 3D printer, explains
Christopher in this article, Riusuke Fukahori Paints Three-Dimensional Goldfish Embedded in Layers of Resin, at Colossal Art & Design. Includes a video demonstrating how it's done. Fascinating. Also see the photo gallery of his stuff at thisFlickr site.
(Hat tip: Warren Meyer)
I pegged the Girl Scouts as an inconsequential holding pen for dimwitted, extroverted sheep and bossy Lucy van Pelts whose parents got stuck selling overrated cookies once a year. Until recently, I had no idea the organization was helping dismantle what's left of the West, says Kathy Shaidle in this article, Girl Scout Kooky, at Taki's Magazine.
Looking at the Inquisition, one sees the West crossing a threshold from one kind of world into another. Persecution acquired a modern platform – the advantages afforded by a growing web of standardised law, communications, administrative supervision and controlled mechanisms of force. It was run not merely by warriors but by an educated elite; not merely by thugs but by skilled professionals, says
Cullen Murphy in this article, Inside the heresy files, at New Humanist.
Obama Kool Aid drinkers who just can't bring themselves to the understanding that THEIR guy may well be in trouble and in order to deflect any talk of ineligibility, they try the old and worn…"Well, what about THESE Presidents…HUH?"…tact. These liberals will lay upon you the names of other Presidents who had one or both parents born off soil so to speak so, let's have a look, says
Craig Andresen in this article, Obama Eligibility and the Gotcha Liberals, at The National Patriot.
. . . . .
1935 Magazine ad
Plymouth, one of the "low priced three", sold well through the Depression and probably saved Chrysler Corporation. Plymouth both benefited and suffered from Chrysler's innovative engineering. Floating power, an engine-mount system which kept engine torque and vibration from reaching the frame, was a big plus but their Air Flow body style, barely detectable to modern eyes, was a bit too radical for many '30s customers. This ad cites the benefits of moving the seats and engine forward, foreshadowing their successful cab forward concept of the early 1990s. The Plymouth brand followed DeSoto into oblivion in the early 2000s.
The average citizen is the world's most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts.
Edward Bernays, via theburningplatform.com
Tasers are no longer tools of non-lethal defense. Indeed, they were never used in this manner or intended for this purpose. They are merely cattle prods designed to force the citizenry to obey the dictates of their low-level controllers by means of "pain-compliance." Tasers are, essentially, the modern version of the whip.
Brandon Turbeville, activistpost.com
Gerald Celente - I buy gold in many different forms. One of the ways is – I believe the price is going up so in April I took contracts to take delivery in gold. So I bought gold at $1443.00 an ounce in April, to take delivery in December, and kept putting money into my account and building my account to take delivery. That's all I was doing. They went in and raided my account. It's criminal activity if anyone else does it.
Gerald Celente, interview at The Daily Bell, via alt-market.com
Under a security risk rating system used by the federal government, the Super Bowl ranks second just below national security events involving the president and the Secret Service.
Wil Longbottom, dailymail.co.uk
Solar storms - The last time we had a truly powerful storm was in 1921—decades before developed economies became utterly dependent on electrical infrastructure...
the last notable one occurred in March 1989. It took down Quebec's entire grid within seconds... There is still no design code for the grid and its components that takes into account threats from space weather.
John Kappenman, spectrum.ieee.org (Hat tip: survivalblog)
Oklahoma - Mustang Public Schools officials said a ninth-grader snapped a photo of a snoozing substitute with a cellphone last Friday at Mustang Mid-High School. The student was later suspended.
koco.com (Hat tip: Drudge)
Hawaii - H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years. H.B. 2288, which was introduced Friday, says the dossiers must include a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited.
Declan McCullagh, cnet.com
Rumorville - I think Gingrich's star is a shooting star and will quickly fade. I don't know if Nancy Pelosi is go to expose his bisexuality or not when she made her threat to him last week. I think eventually, Santorum's pedophilia will come out, perhaps in the Sandusky case.
Country Codger, codgerville.wordpress.com
I think Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. I think they're going to collapse. Quite frankly, the credit crisis that Japan is going to have is going to be far more serious than Greece. Japan makes a difference. They're a big country. Greece is an ant hill.
John Mauldin, via Chris Martenson at chrismartenson.com/blog
Theories of what came before the Big Bang suggest we're hostage to a superfluous assumption. Like phlogiston, aether and the humors, "nothing" may be an idea without a corresponding reality. It could be remembered as the last notion physics accepted without proof, or even good evidence.
Ol' Remus, woodpilereport.com
. . . . .
This issue
